Jeffrey Adelman > Jeffrey's Quotes

“When facing a dilemma, choose the more morally demanding alternative.”
― Harold S. Kushner, Living a Life That Matters: Resolving the Conflict between Conscience and Success

“If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.”
― Carl Sagan

“Christmas Gift Suggestions:
To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect.”
― Oren Arnold

“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“The right thing to do and the hard thing to do are usually the same.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“The dictators of the world say that if you tell a lie often enough, why, people will believe it. Well, if you tell the truth often enough, they’ll believe it and go along with you.”
― Harry Truman, Where the Buck Stops: The Personal and Private Writings of Harry S. Truman

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde

“All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism, for the record, it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”
― Conan O'Brien

“Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.”
― Leon Trotsky, Diary in Exile, 1935

“Doing what needs to be done may not make you happy, but it will make you great.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Everyone suffers at least one bad betrayal in their lifetime. It’s what unites us. The trick is not to let it destroy your trust in others when that happens. Don’t let them take that from you.”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, Invincible

“We are going to fight. We are going to be hurt. And in the end, we will stand.”
― Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
― Robert F. Kennedy

“The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.”
― Robert F. Kennedy

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
― Robert F. Kennedy

“Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.”
― Robert F. Kennedy

“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“It's hard enough for a person to keep their own socks pulled up, let alone someone else's.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win.”
― Stephen King, The Shining

“You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“What happens when people open their hearts?"
"They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.”
― Criss Jami

“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“If you stop being afraid of the word no and take more chances, you will get more yes.”
― Jeanette Coron

“The most formidable chains are forged from beliefs. Ah, beliefs! Beliefs tear out the eyes and leave us blind and groping in the dark. If I believe in one proposition, I have become locked behind the door of that belief, and all other doors to learning and freedom, although standing open and waiting for me to enter, are now closed to me. If I believe in one God, one religion, yes, if I believe in God at all, if I have closed my mind to magic, to spirit, to salvation, to the unknown dimension that exist in the firmament, I have plunged my mind into slavery. Test all beliefs. Distrust all beliefs.”
― Gerry Spence, Seven Simple Steps to Personal Freedom: An Owner's Manual for Life

“The old saw that "sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never harm me" does not, in fact, hold true.”
― Gerry Spence, How to Argue and Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere, Every Day