Inspiring and Horrifying Quotes

I love collecting quotes. Please add quotes you like using the comments feature and I’ll put them on the site.

If we listened to our intellect we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go in business because we’d be cynical: “It’s gonna go wrong.” Or “She’s going to hurt me.” Or, “I’ve had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . .” Well, that’s nonsense. You’re going to miss life. You’ve got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.

Ray Bradbury

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Milan Kundera

We do not count a man’s years until he has nothing else to count.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love is like a fruit. It may look good, but you shouldn’t bite in it until it’s ripe.

Nick Hertl

Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it.

Lao-Tzu

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

George Orwell

It is better to be hated for what you are then to be loved for what you are not.

Author Unknown

The most merciful thing in the world . . . is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H.P. Lovecraft

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.

Frank Herbert – “Dune”

Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself–a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.

Frank Herbert – “Dune Messiah”

We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose.

Frank Herbert – “Chapter House Dune”

Time does not count itself. You have only to look at a circle and this is apparent.

Frank Herbert – “Chapter House Dune”

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it people will eventually come to believe it.

Joseph Goebbels

Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?

Epicurus

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Pastor Niemoeller (Concentration Camp Survivor)

“All that can be done for you is nothing to what you can do for yourself.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is still complicity.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Slaughterhouses should be in restaurants and grocery stores. They should have a glass wall so people must see the animals and choose. Look into the animal’s eyes and say, “OK, slit his throat.”

Ingrid Newkirk

“I will no longer confer, differ, refer, defer, prefer, or suffer. I renounce the whole tribe of fero. I embrace absolute life.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

Thomas Paine

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”

Nietzsche

6 Responses

  1. Julie 1336
    Julie 1336 / 3-20-2007 / ·

    Some great stuff there Ciaran!

    Here’s a few more:

    “But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.”
    Plutarch
    “We are what our thoughts have made us, so take care about what you
    think.” Swami Vivehananda

    “Your daily life is your temple and your religion.”
    Kahil Gibran

    and for cat lovers everywhere:
    “The smallest feline is a masterpiece.” Leonardo da Vinci

  2. Dinah
    Dinah / 5-2-2007 / ·

    Here’s my quote:

    Ciaran Hanway is a legend – Dinah 4th May 2007

    You’d probably better not put this one on your quotes page…

  3. Dinah
    Dinah / 7-30-2007 / ·

    Saw these two great quotes in a travel shop in Dorchester:
    ‘Life is either a daring adventure or nothing’ Helen Keller
    ‘Courage is very scared to death – and saddling up anyway’ John Wayne

  4. Fabien
    Fabien / 5-25-2009 / ·

    I saw this sentence wrote on a statue in the city where I study, Montpellier in France.

    “La vie c’est comme une bite, parfois c’est dur.”
    Translation: “Life is like a cock, sometimes it’s hard.”

    It’s not Shakespeare, unfortunately.

    Have a good day, your blog is really good.

  5. Steve
    Steve / 7-12-2010 / ·

    Hmm. Some randoms off the top of my head. Though amusing rather than inspiring…

    “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
    John Hughes (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)

    An elderly John Betjemen, when asked if he had any regrets about his life.
    “I haven’t had enough sex.”

    “I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning that’s the best they’re going to feel all day.”
    Frank Sinatra

    An exchange between the portly GK Chesterton and the slight GB Shaw
    Chesterton: I see there has been a famine in the land.
    Shaw: And I see the cause of it.

  6. alcahofa diet
    alcahofa diet / 5-27-2011 / ·

    It’s your god. They’re your rules. *You* go to hell.

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