Knowledge - Quotes

The tiny, initial clue ... by allowing us to imagine what we do not know, stimulates a desire for knowledge. - Marcel Proust

The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. - Sri Aurobindo

The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn when teachers themselves are taught to learn. - Bertolt Brecht

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand. - Frank Herbert

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge… observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. - Denis Diderot

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. - Bertrand Russell

There's so much knowledge to be had that specialists cling to their specialties as a shield against having to know anything about anything else. They avoid being drowned. - Isaac Asimov

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett

This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power. - Herodotus

To furnish the means of acquiring knowledge is ... the greatest benefit that can be conferred upon mankind. It prolongs life itself and enlarges the sphere of existence. - John Quincy Adams

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge. - Socrates

To receive instruction and knowledge is as natural as to receive the light of the sun, if a man opens his eyes. - Benjamin Whichcote

Ultimately you want to have the entire world's knowledge connected directly to your mind. - Sergey Brin

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds – justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. - Anne Rice

We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom. - Michel de Montaigne

We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. The real nature of things we shall never know. - Albert Einstein

We ought to be ten times as hungry for knowledge as for food for the body. - Henry Ward Beecher

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child. - George Bernard Shaw

When the fields of human knowledge are so various and so vast as is the case in our day, the utmost that can be done by single minds not of encyclopedic range, is to master one subject or branch of subject as thoroughly as possible, and to rest content with knowing that others are working in regions where neither time nor strength will permit us to enter. - Henry Parry Liddon

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it; this is knowledge. - Confucius

Wonder is the desire of knowledge. - Thomas Aquinas

You can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and still come out completely dry.  Most people do. - Norman Juster

You must know all there is to know in your particular field and keep on the alert for new knowledge. The least difference in knowledge between you and another man may spell his success and your failure. - Henry Ford

Kindness - Quotes

How much easier it is to act kindly and naturally to our fellow men, and even to the domestic, useful and faithful animals about us, than to effect a rude and boisterous demeanour, which is sure not only to make others despise us, but on reflection to cause us to despise ourselves. - Nicias Ballard Cooksey

Kindness is an instinctive act, but that impulse must be nurtured, not merely by positive external feedback, but also by internal decision. Make kindness your guiding principle and you will not go wrong. Acknowledge to yourself each time you do something out of kindness and allow yourself to feel good about it so that, as you go forward, more and more of your acts will be acts rooted in kindness. - Ayamantara

Kindness is helpful to the happiness of both recipient and giver. Who does not feel happier on showing kindness to others, and who does not feel happier on receiving the manifestation of kindness? Deeds of kindness shown in the little things of life constitute man's chief happiness. Many are not able to do any great things for others, but all can find abundant opportunity of showing little deeds of kindness which will add much to the happiness of mankind. - Nicias Ballard Cooksey

Kindness is the currency of our hearts, the only currency that can never be subtracted and never be balanced in anyone's ledgers. We choose to be kind because it is the way we want to live our lives, not because we will be rewarded in some way. When we start to keep score, we become closed-hearted: I'm not doing anything nice until someone does something good for me. Our acts of kindness are whole unto themselves. They require no acknowledgment and no reward, for the act itself returns us once again to the heart of our own humanity. - Will Glennon

Kindness is the visible expression of a feeling and merciful heart; it is the going forth of a tender and susceptible mind; it claims kindred with the human race; it is all ear to listen – all heart to feel – all eye to examine and to weep – all hand and foot to relieve; it invites the sufferer with kind words, and sends him not empty away. - John Angell James

Kindness is too often left uncultivated, because men do not sufficiently understand its value. Men may be charitable and not kind; merciful, yet not kind; self-denying and yet not kind. If they would add a little common kindness to their uncommon graces, they would convert ten where they now only abate the prejudice of one. - Frederick W. Faber

Imagination - Quotes

The history of scientific and technical discovery teaches us that the human race is poor in independent and creative imagination. - Albert Einstein

The human imagination ... has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialistic practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open. - John Berger

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates. - Oscar Wilde

The imagination is man’s power over nature. - Wallace Stevens

The imagination is to the effect as the shadow to the opaque body which causes the shadow. - Leonardo da Vinci

The man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of existence that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will never enrich his science by the addition of a new idea. - Max Planck

The power of imagination makes us infinite. - John Muir

There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. - Voltaire

What feeling, knowledge or will man has depends in the last resort upon what imagination he has. - Søren Kierkegaard

The most important thing for a child to learn is that only some things can be imagined into reality. The most important thing for an adult to learn is that even if it doesn’t happen all the time, things DO get imagined into reality. - John Green

The only faculty by which we can bring the invisible near, is the imagination. Beyond that which the eye sees, beyond that which the ear hears, is a great region in which life is freer and more transcendently glorious than this. The imagination in us finds its field in trying to grasp that great fact. - Reuben Thomas

The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sorcery and charm of imagination, and the power it gives to the individual to transform his world into a new world of order and delight, makes it one of the most treasured of all human capacities. - Frank Barron

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope. - Henry Ward Beecher

The source of genius is imagination alone. - Eugene Delacroix

The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations. - Alfred North Whitehead

The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it's only intangibles, ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. - Chuck Palahniuk

The wonder of imagination is this: It has the power to light its own fire. - John L. Mason

The world is but a canvas to the imagination. - Henry David Thoreau

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science. - Albert Einstein

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. - Thomas Alva Edison

We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire. - George Eliot

We imagine what we desire; we will what we imagine; and at last we create what we will. - George Bernard Shaw

Whatever one man is capable of imagining, other men will prove themselves capable of realizing. - Jules Verne

Without imagination, a man is but a poor creature. His life is like a night without a moon to gild it. - Christian Nestell Bovee

You can’t do it unless you imagine it. - George Lucas

You have to be careful what you imagine, because the act of imagining is the act of encouraging yourself to be a certain kind of person. - Margaret Drabble

Your knowledge has limits but your imagination does not. - Geraint Straker

Ideas - Quotes

If those in charge of our society – politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television – can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves. - Howard Zinn

If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do. Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait. - Robert Heinlein

If you believe in an idea, you don’t own you, it owns you. - Raymond Chandler

If you're going to deal in the world of ideas, you have to be, to some extent, a salesman. And you're going to sink or rise according to your ability to be a good salesman of ideas. - Barry Diller

In the same way as the tree bears the same fruit year after year, but each time new fruit, all lastingly valuable ideas in thinking must always be reborn. - Albert Schweitzer

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all. - Edward de Bono

It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on. - Ursula K. le Guin

It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought and perception of an individual. - Alexander Fleming

It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available. - Thomas Mann

It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date. - Roger von Oech

It’s not hard to get the ideas when they come. They just come... it’s painful waiting for them. - Oscar Wilde

I've known people who had fantastic ideas, but who couldn't get the idea off the ground because they approached everything weakly. They thought that their ideas would somehow take off by themselves, or that just coming up with an idea was enough. Let me tell you something – it's not enough. It will never be enough. You have to put the idea into action. If you don't have the motivation and the enthusiasm, your great idea will simply sit on top of your desk or inside your head and go nowhere. - Donald Trump

Make it a point to keep a lookout for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are currently working on. - Thomas Alva Edison

Man’s fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness. - Morris Leopold Ernst

My friend, drop all your preconceived and fixed ideas and be neutral. Do you know why this cup is useful? Because it is empty. - Bruce Lee

Life - Quotes

A complete stranger has the capacity to alter the life of another irrevocably. This domino effect has the capacity to change the course of an entire world. That is what life is; a chain reaction of individuals colliding with others and influencing their lives without realizing it. A decision that seems miniscule to you, may be monumental to the fate of the world. - J. D. Stroube

Always choose to heal, not to hurt, to forgive not to despise, to persevere not to quit, to smile not to frown, and to love not to hate. At the end of life, what really matters is not what we bought, but what we built, not what we got, but what we shared, not our competence but our character, and not our success but our significance. - Unknown

Whatever your sex or position, life is a battle in which you are to show your pluck, and woe be to the coward. Whether passed on a bed of sickness or a tented field, it is ever the same fair play and admits no foolish distinction. Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail. - Henry David Thoreau

The days of life are consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment; ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally before us. If death or bankruptcy happen to trip us out of the circle, it is matter for the buzz of the evening, and is completely forgotten by the next morning. - Thomas Jefferson

Most of life is so dull it is not worth discussing, and it is dull at all ages. When we change our brand of cigarette, move to a new neighbourhood, subscribe to a different newspaper, fall in and out of love, we are protesting in ways both frivolous and deep against the not to be diluted dullness of day-to-day living. - Truman Capote

More on Life Here, and the book The Mystery of Life - a collection of quotes on and pertaining to life.

Humour

Anger - Quotes

It’s important for people to keep in mind that while anger is a feeling that everybody has, aggression is a choice. - Carole D. Stovall

It’s so important to realize that every time you get upset, it drains your emotional energy. Losing your cool makes you tired. Getting angry a lot messes with your health. - Joyce Meyer

Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves. - Mitch Albom

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness. - James Thurber

Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry. If he has charged you with anything, you had better look it up. Anger is a bow that will shoot sometimes where another feeling will not. - Henry Ward Beecher

Never get angry. Never make a threat. Reason with people. - Mario Puzo

Never respond to an angry person with a fiery comeback, even if he deserves it. Don’t allow his anger to become your anger. - Bohdi Sanders

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched. - George Jean Nathan

Not to be provok'd is best: But if mov'd, never correct till the fume is spent; for every stroke our fury strikes, is sure to hit ourselves at last. - William Penn

Postpone today's anger until tomorrow. - Tagalog Proverb

Sometimes, you have to get angry to get things done. - Lee Ang

The anger of the prudent never shows. - Burmese Proverb

The wrong that rouses our angry passions finds only a medium in us; it passes through us like a vibration, and we inflict what we have suffered. - George Eliot

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot. - Plato

When anger walks it is strongest; let it rest and it gets weak. - Edward Counsel

When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing. - Octavia E. Butler

Whenever anger comes up, take out a mirror and look at yourself. When you are angry, you are not very beautiful. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath. - Eckhart Tolle

Whining is anger through a small opening. - Stuart Smalley

You can learn to handle your anger well. First, recognize that anger is a normal part of life. Everybody feels angry from time to time. Like all feelings, anger is neither good nor bad, it just is. - Ronald & Patricia Potter-Efron

Loss - Quotes

That loss is most discreditable which is caused by negligence. - Seneca

That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning. - Richard Bach

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. - Elizabeth Bishop

The fear of losing is the flip side of the need to win. Because evolution doesn't favour losers, the fear of losing is so programmed into our DNA that we do all sorts of things, both rational and irrational, to avoid losing. We don't let people cut into line, we compete in meaningless games and sports as if our lives were at stake, and we will never buy from or agree with someone who makes us feel as if he's about to win and we're about to lose. - Gene Bedell

The loss which is unknown is no loss at all. - Publilius Syrus

The victor shall soon be the vanquished, if he relax his exertion; and ... the vanquished this year, may be the victor in the next, in spite of all competition. - Abraham Lincoln

The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on. When you're faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow, the world keeps turning, the seconds keep ticking. - James Patterson

There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other. - Jose Ortega Y Gasset

'Tis better to have loved and loss than never to have loved at all. - Alfred Tennyson

We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss. - Cassandra Clare

We gain and lose by the same means. - Roman Proverb

We lost not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. And our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our conscious and unconscious losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety – and the loss of our own younger self, the self that thought it would always be unwrinkled and invulnerable and immortal. - Judith Viorst

We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one. - Dean Koontz

We never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures. - Gail Cladwell

What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. - Suzanne Collins

What makes defeat so painful is just the awareness that the other has won. It hurts to lose because it feels so good to win. - David Roochnik

Whoever said that loss gets easier with time was a liar. Here's what really happens: The spaces between the times you miss them grow longer. Then, when you do remember to miss them again, it's still with a stabbing pain to the heart. And you have guilt. Guilt because it's been too long since you missed them last. - Kristin O’Donnell

Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it. - Dianne Feinstein

Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss, but cheerily seek how to redress their harms. - William Shakespeare

You can't blame your opponents for applying a strategy that beats your brains out with regularity. - Bill Clinton

You know what makes a good loser? Practice. - Ernest Hemingway

You’re never a loser until you quit trying. - Mike Ditka

Lawyers - Quotes

Law is an imperfect profession in which success can rarely be achieved without some sacrifice of principle. Thus, all practicing lawyers – and most others in the profession – will necessarily be imperfect, especially in the eyes of young idealists. There is no perfect justice, just as there is no absolute in ethics. But there is perfect injustice, and we know it when we see it. - Alan Dershowitz

Lawyer even sounds like liar. - Walter Mosley

Lawyers are a bad lot.... They cheat their living out of honest people. - Albert R. Carman

Lawyers are doubters, skeptics; not in a bad sense. But they never know anything absolutely and utterly without qualifications or modifications. - G. N. Tillman

Lawyers are ideological enemies of informal justice. - Richard L Abel

Lawyers are like catfish. A nibble here, a nibble there ... before you know it the principal's gone, you've got a pile of bills, and not much else. - Meredith Blevins

Lawyers are like cheeses. There are lots of good ones, but not everybody likes the taste of some or can afford the best of others. - Robin Ellison

Lawyers are like doctors. They've each a secret language of their own so that if you get a letter from one lawyer you've got to take it to another to get it read, just like a doctor sends you to a chemist with a rigmarole that no one else can read, so they can charge you what they like for a drop of coloured water. - Harold Brighhouse

Children - Quotes

Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Screaming at children over their grades, especially to the point of the child’s tears, is child abuse, pure and simple. It’s not funny and it’s not good parenting. It is a crushing, scarring, disastrous experience for the child. It isn’t the least bit funny. - Ben Stein

Small children give you a headache, big children a heartache. - Russian Proverb

That energy which makes a child hard to manage is the energy which afterwards makes him a manager of life. - Henry Ward Beecher

The best inheritance a parent can give to his children is a few minutes of their time each day. - M. Grundler

The children despise their parents until the age of when they suddenly become just like them – thus preserving the system. - Quentin

The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. - Socrates

The deeds of the children are a testament to the upbringing they received from their parents. - Christopher Paolini

The family is both the fundamental unit of society as well as the root of culture. It ... is a perpetual source of encouragement, advocacy, assurance, and emotional refuelling that empowers a child to venture with confidence into the greater world and to become all that he can be. - Marianne E. Neifert

The first gold star a child gets in school for the mere performance of a needful task is its first lesson in graft. - Philip Wylie

The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith. - Billy Graham

The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. - John Lubbock

The more we shelter children from every disappointment, the more devastating future disappointments will be. - Fred G. Gosman

The older I get, the more I marvel at the wisdom of children. - David Morgan

The soul is healed by being with children. - Fyodor Dostoevsky