Jacob > Jacob's Quotes

“My ambition is handicapped by laziness”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”
― Adam Smith

“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”
― Aristotle

“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.”
― Henry Miller

“After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone or on the lives of other people. This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who writes dirty words in a public toilet to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind. Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do.”
― John Steinbeck, The Pastures of Heaven

“Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.”
― Robert Heinlein

“A lady came up to me one day and said 'Sir! You are drunk', to which I replied 'I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.”
― Winston Churchill

“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.”
― Mark Twain

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

[On British Labour politician Stafford Cripps.]”
― Winston S. Churchill, Wealth, War and Wisdom

“Personally, I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“That however the brains and abilities of men may differ, their stomachs are essentially the same.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“at one time, a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conceptions of religion, law and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed... In the old days, you see, if a man - a Frenchman, for instance- wished to get an education, he would have set to work to study the classics, the theologians, the tragedians, historians and philosophers- and you can realize all the intellectual labour involved. But nowadays he goes straight for the literature of negation, rapidly assimilates the essence of the science of negation, and thinks he's finished.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Boredom: the desire for desires.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”
― Mark Twain

“I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. ”
― W.C. Fields

“Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources”
― C.E.M. Joad

“If you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
― Albert Einstein

“′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.”
― Mark Twain

“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“If we could read the past histories of all our enemies we would disregard all hostility for them.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
― Anais Nin

“Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.”
― Peter Ustinov

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking...”
― Leo Tolstoy

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina