Democracy - Quotes

A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way. - Fisher Ames

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. - Thomas Jefferson

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb. - Emil Cioran

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person. - James Madison

All those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy, which literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip away from us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we attempt to act upon them. - Jane Addams

Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy. - Bill Moyers

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. - Isaac Asimov

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. - Abraham Lincoln

As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences. - Eugene McCarthy

Democracy and so-called human rights are only a window dressing designed to keep the naked facts hidden under a cloak of false decency. - Paula Horan

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what it is you want to hear. - Alan Coren

Democracy depends on citizens being informed, and since our media, especially television (which is the most important source of news for most Americans) reports mostly what the people in power do, and repeats what the people in power say, the public is badly informed, and it means we cannot really say we have a functioning democracy. - Howard Zinn

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions – it only guarantees equality of opportunity. - Irving Kristol

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor. - James Russell Lowell

Democracy has become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, by which we try men and measures; and this is the same as to say that it is merely a word which is powerful with us, and not the wide and true notion of what the word means. But we must define the true import of words, and not be slaves to syllables; for democracy in form is not necessarily people-power in fact, but power perhaps of a few, who cajole the many and so lead and use the people for their own ends. - James Vial Blake

Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike. - Plato

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. - George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a double edge sword. - Roger Anderson

Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state. - Vladimir Lenin

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. - H. L. Mencken

Democracy is a system that gives people a chance to elect rascals of their own choice. - Doug Larson

Democracy is alive, and like any other living thing it either flourishes and grows or withers and dies. There is no in-between. - Saul Alinsky

Democracy is also a single ideology, and, like all such templates, it has its limits. what works in a legislature might not work in a corporation. - Fareed Zakaria

Democracy is hypocrisy without limitation. - Iskander Mirza

Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it’s something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles. - Abbie Hoffman

Democracy is popular because of the illusion of choice and participation it provides, but when you live in a society in which most people’s knowledge of the world extends as far as sports, sitcoms, reality shows, and celebrity gossip, democracy becomes a very dangerous idea. Until people are properly educated and informed, instead of indoctrinated to be ignorant mindless consumers, democracy is nothing more than a clever tool used by the ruling class to subjugate the rest of us. - Gavin Nascimento

Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage. - H. L. Mencken

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be. - Sydney J. Harris

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time. - E. B. White

Democracy is the road to socialism. - Karl Marx

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! - Benjamin Franklin

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers. - Aristotle

Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking. - Clement Atlee

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. - Oscar Wilde

Democracy must be built through open societies that share information. When there is information, there is enlightenment. When there is debate, there are solutions. When there is no sharing of power, no rule of law, no accountability, there is abuse, corruption, subjugation and indignation. - Atifete Jahjaga

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. - James Bovard

Democracy works when people claim it as their own. - Bill Moyers

Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not "given", it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice. - Aung San Suu Kyi

Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide. - John Adams

Democracy's worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents. - Robert A. Heinlein

Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Democrats are children of the Enlightenment. They believe in the perfectibility of humanity. They revere systems even more than they do results. - Paul Begala

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty. - Plato

Does this mean that I am an opponent of democracy? Not at all. Fiction for fiction, it is the least harmful. But it is well not to confound its promises with realities. The fiction consists in the postulate of all democratic government, that the great majority of the electors in a state are enlightened, free, honest, and patriotic--whereas such a postulate is a mere chimera. The majority in any state is necessarily composed of the most ignorant, the poorest, and the least capable; the state is therefore at the mercy of accident and passion, and it always ends by succumbing at one time or another to the rash conditions which have been made for its existence. A man who condemns himself to live upon the tight-rope must inevitably fall; one has no need to be a prophet to foresee such a result. - Henri-Frederic Amiel

Everybody’s for democracy in principle. It’s only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections. - Meg Greenfield

I have hinted that what people are afraid of in democracy is less the thing itself than what they conceive to be its necessary adjuncts and consequences. It is supposed to reduce all mankind to a dead level of mediocrity in character and culture, to vulgarize men's conceptions of life, and therefore their code of morals, manners, and conduct – to endanger the rights of property and possession. But I believe that the real gravamen of the charges lies in the habit it has of making itself generally disagreeable by asking the Powers that Be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the powers that ought to be. If the powers that be are in a condition to give a satisfactory answer to this inevitable question, they need feel in no way discomfited by it. - James Russell Lowell

If in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave. - Jane Addams 

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost. - Aristotle

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. - Aristotle

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed. - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end. - Bayard Rustin

In a democracy, every ordinary citizen is effectively a king – but a king in a constitutional democracy, a monarch who decides only formally, whose function is merely to sign off on measures proposed by an executive administration. This is why the problem with democratic rituals is homologous to the great problem of constitutional monarchy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How to maintain the appearance that the king effectively makes decisions, when we all know this not to be true? - Slavoj Zizek

Modern democracies will face difficult new challenges –ighting terrorism, adjusting to globalization, adapting to an aging society – and they will have to make their system work much better than it currently does. That means making democratic decision-making effective, reintegrating constitutional liberalism into the practice of democracy, rebuilding broken political institutions and civic associations. Perhaps most difficult of all, it requires that those with immense power in our societies embrace their responsibilities, lead, and set standards that are not only legal, but moral. Without this inner stuffing, democracy will become an empty shell, not simply inadequate but potentially dangerous, bringing with it the erosion of liberty, the manipulation of freedom, and the decay of a common life. - Fareed Zakaria

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does. - Will Rogers

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. - Helen Keller

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. - John Adams

The best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. - Edward Abbey

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. - Robert Hutchins

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. - Thomas Jefferson

The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

The essence of democracy is its assurance that every human being should so respect himself and should be so respected in his own personality that he should have opportunity equal to that of every other human being to show what he was meant to become. - Anna Garlin Spencer

The highest measure of democracy is neither the ‘extent of freedom’ nor the ‘extent of equality’, but rather the highest measure of participation. - A. d. Benoist

The idea of representative democracy will change. Today, we claim we don't use direct democracy because it would be impractical to poll everybody on every issue. The truth is that we use representative democracy because we want to get an above-average group to think through problems and make choices that, in the short term, might not be obvious – even if they are to everybody's benefit over the long term. - Bill Gates

The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity. - Ambrose Bierce

The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose. - Barack Obama

The very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that he might be. - Edwin H. Land

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois. - Gustave Flaubert

To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy. - Aung San Suu Kyi

We should be more modest in our belief that we can impose democracy on a country through military force. In the past, it has been movements for freedom from within tyrannical regimes that have led to flourishing democracies; movements that continue today. This doesn’t mean abandoning our values and ideals; wherever we can, it’s in our interest to help foster democracy through the diplomatic and economic resources at our disposal. But even as we provide such help, we should be clear that the institutions of democracy – free markets, a free press, a strong civil society – cannot be built overnight, and they cannot be built at the end of a barrel of a gun. And so we must realize that the freedoms FDR once spoke of – especially freedom from want and freedom from fear – do not just come from deposing a tyrant and handing out ballots; they are only realized once the personal and material security of a people is ensured as well. - Barack Obama

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy? - Mahatma Gandhi

What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority. - Walter Lippmann

You've got to be an optimist to be a Democrat, and you've got to be a humourist to stay one. - Will Rogers

A Short Poem

Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,

A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,

He passes from life to his rest in the grave.

 - Lord Byron

People - Quotes

Let go of people who dull your shine, poison your spirit, and bring you drama. Cancel your subscription to their issues. - Unknown

People may not always tell you how they feel about you, but they will always show you. - Unknown

People take different roads seeking fulfilment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road does not mean they are lost. - Dalai Lama

Surround yourself with the right people; people who are on the move, focused, determined and ambitious to achieve more! - Unknown

Sometimes the strongest people are the ones who love beyond all faults. Cry behind closed doors and fight battles that nobody knows about. - Unknown

People far prefer happiness to wisdom, but that is like wanting to be immortal without getting older. - Sydney J. Harris

People may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. - Carl W. Buechner

There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are. - John William Gardner

Some people cause happiness wherever they go. Some people cause happiness whenever they go. - Oscar Wilde

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry. - Oscar Wilde

Be nice to people on your way up because you meet ’em on your way down. - Jimmy Durante 

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent. - Bob Dylan

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after. - Oliver Goldsmith

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it. - George Bernard Shaw

People who take the time to be alone usually have depth, originality, and quiet reserve. - John Miller

People, like nails, lose their effectiveness when they lose direction and begin to bend. - Walter Savage Landor 

People, like sheep, tend to follow a leader - occasionally in the right direction. - Alexander Chase

The only people in the world who can change things are those who can sell ideas. - Lois Wyse

There just isn’t any pleasing some people. The trick is to stop trying. - Robert Mitchum

If the people will lead, eventually the leaders will follow. - Florence Robinson 

Know people for who they are rather than for what they are. - Anthony D'Angelo

The only normal people are the one’s you don’t know very well. - Alfred Adler

People who make no noise are dangerous. - Jean De La Fontaine

Depression - Quotes

According to a recent study, depression is described as being the disease most destructive to humankind, largely because of the devastation it wreaks on our lives.... Yes, we could set up our minds to ignore our feelings and barricade ourselves from the winds and dust of the brain pattern. And we could become like robots, refusing to consider the passion and joys that could be ours. But then, we also might as well be dead. - Frank Lawlis

All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously. - Tom Robbins

And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore. - Anne Lamott

Depression is a prison where you are both the suffering prisoner and the cruel jailer. - Dorothy Rowe

Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It's always there, though. - Jeffrey Eugenides

Depression is one of the few psychological disorders that can be said to be fatal. Of all the consequences, suicide is, of course, the starkest consequence of the individual’s feelings of hopelessness and debility. - Constance Hammen

Depression is the inability to construct a future. - Rollo May

Depression is like a woman in black. If she turns up, don’t shoo her away. Invite her in, offer her a seat, treat her like a guest and listen to what she wants to say. - Carl Jung

During depression the world disappears ... because the inner voice is so urgent in its own discourse: How shall I live? How shall I manage the future? Why should I go on? - Kate Millett

Here is the tragedy: when you are the victim of depression, not only do you feel utterly helpless and abandoned by the world, you also know that very few people can understand, or even begin to believe, that life can be this painful. - Giles Andrea

I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full. - Sylvia Plath

I don’t want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can’t even see it, something that’s drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead. - Margaret Atwood

I waste at least an hour every day lying in bed. Then I waste time pacing. I waste time thinking. I waste time being quiet and not saying anything because I’m afraid I’ll stutter. - Ned Vizzini

I’ll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does. - Henry Rollins

If depression is creeping up and must be faced, learn something about the nature of the beast: You may escape without a mauling. - R. W. Shepherd

If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather. Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do. - Stephen Fry

In depression this faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come – not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. - William Styron

In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing – they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me. - Stephen Fry

It’s so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself. That’s above and beyond everything else, and it’s not a mental complaint – it’s a physical thing, like it’s physically hard to open your mouth and make the words come out. They don’t come out smooth and in conjunction with your brain the way normal people’s words do; they come out in chunks as if from a crushed-ice dispenser; you stumble on them as they gather behind your lower lip. So you just keep quiet. - Ned Vizzini

Like those rare conditions which causes a person's own immune system to assault itself, depression is a disorder wherein the self-attacks the self. - Terrence Real

Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don’t believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it’s good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason. - Andrew Solomon

Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken. - C.S. Lewis

Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain ... it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion. - William Styron

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression. - Dodie Smith

Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't. - Kay Redfield Jamison

Perhaps the saddest irony of depression is that suicide happens when the patient gets a little better and can again function sufficiently. - Dick Cavett

Something crucial about depression ... The smarter you were, the worse it was. The sharper your brain, the more it cut you up. - Jeffrey Eugenides

Sometimes, my heart hurts so much, I beat it with my fists. I try to run. But you cannot run away from this. You cannot run from it. Wherever you run, it waits for you. Even when you think you have escaped it, it is there, where you have run to. It waits for you, to ambush you. It is like those vines called lianas, those tropical creepers that grow around you and strangle you. You cut off one branch, but there is another that grows. You leap over the wall of one ghetto and find yourself in another ghetto. - Klaus Kinski

That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. - Elizabeth Wurtzel

The sun stopped shining for me is all. The whole story is: I am sad. I am sad all the time and the sadness is so heavy that I can’t get away from it. Not ever. - Nina LaCour

The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down. - Daniel Handler

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds. - Laurel K. Hamilton

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, "There now, hang on, you'll get over it." Sadness is more or less like a head cold – with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer. - Barbara Kingsolver

When you're in a Slump, you're not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done. - Dr. Seuss

Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better. - Rainer Maria Rilke

You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don’t feel like you can trust anyone or talk to anybody, you feel like you’re really alone. - Fiona Apple

Desert - Quotes

A desert is a place without expectation. - Nadine Gordimer

I had to live in the desert before I could understand the full value of grass in a green ditch. - Ella Maillart

I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

In the desert, the line between life and death is sharp and quick. - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

In the desert, the only god is a well. - Vera Nazarian

Like water in the desert is wisdom to the soul. - Edward Counsel

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light. - Joyce Carol Oates

Water, water, water.... There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount, a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be. - Edward Abbey

Design - Quotes

A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense. - Bruno Munari

A good designer must rely on experience, on precise, logic thinking; and on pedantic exactness. No magic will do. - Niklaus Wirth

Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose. - Charles Eames

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. - Steve Jobs

Design is not the narrow application of formal skills, it is a way of thinking. - Chris Pullman

Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all… good design must primarily serve people. - Thomas J. Watson

Good design doesn’t date. Bad design does. - Paul Rand

Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design. - Charles Eames

Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; While others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before. - Herodotus

You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality. - Walt Disney

Desires - Quotes

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. - Ayn Rand

A desire arises in the mind. It is satisfied immediately another comes. In the interval which separates two desires a perfect calm reigns in the mind. It is at this moment freed from all thought, love or hate. Complete peace equally reigns between two mental waves. - Swami Sivananda

A desire scorned and neglected is an enemy lying in wait with bared dagger. - Abraham Miller

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man. - John Adams

All human activity is prompted by desire. - Bertrand Russell

All movement, of every creature, comes from the desire after something better. - Charles Buxton

Before we passionately desire a thing, we should examine the happiness of its possessor. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Concentrate all your thoughts on the great desire in your life. This concentration must be continuous, unceasing – every minute; every hour; every day; every week. - Charles E. Popplestone

Desire animates the world. It is present in the baby crying for milk, the girl struggling to solve a math problem, the woman running to meet her lover, and later deciding to have children, and the old woman, hunched over her walker, moving down the hall of the nursing home at a glacial pace to pick up her mail. Banish desire from the world, and you get a world of frozen beings who have no reason to live and no reason to die. - William Braxton Irvine

Desire builds new victory out of temporary defeat. - Unknown

Desire is a teacher: When we immerse ourselves in it without guilt, shame, or clinging, it can show us something special about our own minds that allows us to embrace life fully. - Mark Epstein

Desire is the creator; desire is the destroyer. - Hari Da Baba

Desire is the ingredient that changes the hot water of mediocrity to the steam of outstanding success. - Zig Ziglar 

Desire is the source of our most noble aspirations and our deepest sorrows. The pleasure and the pain go together; indeed, they emanate from the same region in our hearts. We cannot live without the yearning, and yet the yearning sets us up for disappointment – sometimes deep and devastating disappointment. - John Eldredge

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything. - Napoleon Hill

Desire is this absurdity that holds open the infinity of possibility. Ever optimistic, ever resourceful, desire tells us what it sees as it speeds ahead on its divine wings. What we cannot see, desire describes, and then it goads us to travel on until we have given birth to Joy. - Wendy Farley

Desire is neither good nor bad. It initiates greatness as well as undermining it. Desire is like water for it seeks the lowest point in man. Control it like a dam controls a mighty river and you can harness enough power to change the world. - Stephen Maniscalco

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything. - Napoleon Hill

Desire is the very essence of man. - Benedict de Spinoza

Desire is what leads you through life until the time comes when you desire a higher life. So do not be ashamed that you want so much, yet at the same time do not fool yourself into thinking that what you want today will be enough tomorrow. - Deepak Chopra

Desire, like the atom, is explosive with creative force. - Paul Vernon Buser

Desire: the starting point of all achievement. - Napoleon Hill

Desires are central to the soul's unfolding and should not be dismissed before giving them careful attention. - Thomas Moore

Do not desire what you can't acquire. - Ken Alstad

Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours. - Marcus Aurelius

Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true; everything that is not puts us in a rage. - Andre Maurois

Forbid us something, and that thing we desire; but press it on us hard, and we will flee. - Geoffrey Chaucer

He is fortunate who wants the things he knows he can have. - Lewis F. Korns

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. - William Blake

He who destroyed craving has overcome all sorrow. Conquer your desires or they will conquer you. - Unknown

How is the anxious soul of man befool'd in his desire, that thinks a hectic fever may be cool'd in flames of fire? - Francis Quarles

I see nothing wrong with the human trait to desire. In fact, I consider it integral to our success mechanism. Becoming attached to what we desire is what causes the trouble. If you must have it in order to be happy, then you are denying the happiness of the here and now. - Peter Mcwilliams

If men could regard the events of their lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain. - Andre Maurois

Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power. - Walter Lippmann 

In all your desires, let reason go before you, and do not set your hopes beyond the bounds of probability; so shall success attend all your undertakings, and your heart will not be vexed with disappointments. - Unknown

In the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship. - Graham Greene

It is not poverty which produces sorrow, but desire. - Epictetus

It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it. - Aristotle

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened? - George Eliot 

It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents. - Eric Hoffer

It will not do, my friend, to grant an easy indulgence to natural appetite and desire, for they ever seek to be our masters. - T. S. Arthur

Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied. - Henry George

Man's many desires are like the small metal coins he carries about in his pocket. The more he has the more they weight him down. - Satya Sai Baba

Many a talented individual failed because they lacked desire. Many victories have been snatched by the underdog because they wanted it more. So if you desire ‘intensely’ and you act upon it, then everything stands within your reach. - Unknown

Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire. - Dan Brown

Men quickly find a theory that adapts itself to their desires. - Lewis F. Korns

Naked I seek the camp of those who desire nothing. - Horace

Natural desires are within bounds; but unnatural lust is infinite. - Benjamin Whichcote

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment. - Eric Butterworth

Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that clamoured for it. - Marcel Proust

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation. - Elbert Hubbard

Our Desires snort and press forward like giddy stallions, but our Means creep sulkily along like snails. - Abraham Miller

People are distracted by objects of desire, and afterwards repent of the lust they've indulged, because they have indulged with a phantom and are left even farther from Reality than before. Your desire for the illusory is a wing, by means of which a seeker might ascend to Reality. When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off; you become lame and that fantasy flees. Preserve the wing and don't indulge such lust, so that the wing of desire may bear you to Paradise. People fancy they are enjoying themselves, but they are really tearing out their wings for the sake of an illusion. - Jalaluddin Rumi

Plunge into the world, and then, after a time, when you have suffered and enjoyed all that is in it, will renunciation come; then will calmness come. So, fulfil your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender. - Vivekananda

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy. - Samuel Johnson

That's the funny thing about knowing you can't have something. It makes you desperate. - Stephenie Meyer

The central fire is desire, and all the powers of our being are given us to see, to fight for, and to win the object of our desire. Quench that fire and man turns to ashes. - Basil W. Maturin

The desire that is satisfied is not a great desire, nor has the shoulder used all its might that an unbreakable gate has never strained. - William Butler Yeats

The intensity of your desire governs the power with which the force is directed. - John McDonald

The natural wants are few, and easily gratified: it is only those which are artificial that perplex us by their multiplicity. - Christian Nestell Bovee

The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat. - Napoleon Hill

The strongest of all psychic forces in the world is unsatisfied desire. - John Cowper Powys

The very urge to get rid of desire is still desire, is it not? - Jiddu Krishnamurti

There are two tragedies in life. One is not get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it. - George Bernard Shaw

There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless. - Plato

There is no fulfilment that is not made sweeter for the prolonging of desire. - Jacqueline Carey

Things desired are oftentimes of less value than our present possessions. - Edward Counsel

Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained. - William Blake

'Tis easier to suppress the first Desire, than to satisfy all that follow it. - Benjamin Franklin

'Tis much easier to suppress a first desire, than to satisfy all those that follow it. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

To be desired by those who are themselves highly desirable is in itself an aphrodisiac. - Tobsha Learner

To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves. - Federico García Lorca

We are desire. It is the essence of the human soul, the secret of our existence. Absolutely nothing of human greatness is ever accomplished without it. Not a symphony has been written, a mountain climbed, an injustice fought, or a love sustained apart from desire. Desire fuels our search for the life we prize. Our desire, if we will listen to it, will save us from committing soul-suicide, the sacrifice of our hearts on the altar of ‘getting by.’ The same old thing is not enough. It never will be. - John Eldredge

We cannot be free of nagging desires through suppression. This is like trying to keep a rubber boat beneath the water. But we remove compulsive desires altogether by understanding their nature. - Vernon Howard

We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes. - Marcel Proust

We should not desire the impossible. - Leonardo da Vinci

We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none. - Christian Bovee

When it comes to desiring, we are all experts. If there were an Olympics of desiring, we would all make the team. - William Braxton Irvine

When the desire is too much to bear, we often bury it beneath frenzied thoughts and activities or escape it by dulling our immediate consciousness of living. It is possible to run away from the desire for years, even decades, at a time, but we cannot eradicate it entirely. It keeps touching us in little glimpses and hints in our dreams, our hopes, our unguarded moments. - Gerald G. May

When we have the means to pay for what we desire, what we get is not so much what is best, as what is costliest. - Christian Nestell Bovee

Where perception is, there also are pain and pleasure, and where these are, there, of necessity, is desire. - Aristotle

While we desire, we do not enjoy; and with enjoyment desire ceases. - William Hazlitt

You are currently experiencing desire; otherwise, you wouldn't be reading these words. Even if you are reading them at the behest of someone else, you are motivated by your desire to please that person. And if you stop reading, you will not do so because you have stopped desiring but because your desires have changed. - William Braxton Irvine

You had better return home and make a net, than go down to the river and desire to get the fishes. - Chinese Proverb

On another note ...

Desires are egotistic cravings. - Shui-ch'ing Tzu

He who desires is always poor. - Claudius

To have more, desire less. - Unknown

Quote Worthy

You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are. - Henry Ward Beecher

A thousand years may scare form a state. An hour may lay it in ruins. - Lord Bryon

The sheep are happier of themselves than under the care of a wolf. - Thomas Jeffeson

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action. - Fidel Castro

You must look within for value, but must look beyond for perspective. - Denis Waitley

Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows. - David T. Wolf

Use the losses and failures of the past as a reason for action, not inaction. - Charles J. Givens

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation. - Edmund Burke

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death. - Samuel Butler

Chuang Tzu

Chuang Tzu was a Taoist sage, living sometime before 250 B.C. The book, by the same name, Chuang Tzu, is believed to contain both his own writings and writings by others about him and his teachings.

". . . ‘Chuang-Tzu’ is distinguished by its brilliant and original style, with abundant use of satire, paradox, and seemingly nonsensical stories. Chuang-Tzu emphasizes the relativity of all ideas. . . . He puts forward as the solution to the problems of the human condition, freedom in identification with the universal Tao, or principle of Nature."

- The Columbia Encyclopedia, 4th Edition.

If you persist in trying to attain what is never attained, if you persist in making effort to obtain what effort cannot get, if you persist in reasoning about what cannot be understood, you will be destroyed by the very thing you seek. To know when to stop, to know when you can get no further by your own action, this is the right beginning! - Chuang Tzu

The non-action of the wise man is not inaction. It is not studied. It is not shaken by anything. The sage is quiet because he is not moved, not because he wills to be quiet. . . . Joy does all things without concern. For emptiness, stillness, tranquillity, tastelessness, silence, and non-action are the root of all things. - Chuang Tzu

The sage has the sun and moon by his side and the universe under his arm. He blends everything into a harmonious whole. . . . He blends the disparities of ten thousand years into one complete purity. All things are blended like this and mutually involve each other. - Chuang Tzu

To him everything was in process of destruction, everything was in process of construction. This is called tranquility in disturbance. Tranquility in disturbance means that it is especially in the midst of disturbance that [tranquility] becomes perfect. - Chuang Tzu

All existing things are really one. We regard those that are beautiful and rare as valuable, and those that are ugly as foul and rotten. The foul and rotten may come to be transformed into what is rare and valuable,and the rare and valuable into what is foul and rotten. - Chuang Tzu