Benjamin > Benjamin's Quotes

“Learn about art, Captain,” Thrawn said, his voice almost dreamy. “When you understand a species’ art, you understand that species.”
― Timothy Zahn, Star Wars: Heir to the Empire

“Do you know the difference between an error and a mistake, Ensign?”
The entire bridge had gone deathly still. Colclazure swallowed again, his face starting to go pale. “No, sir.”
“Anyone can make an error, Ensign. But that error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.”
― Timothy Zahn, Heir to the Empire

“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Of all men’s miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.”
― Herodotus, The Histories

“If a man insisted on always being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.”
― Herodotus

“It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.”
― Herodotus, The Histories

“After all, no one is stupid enough to prefer war to peace; in peace sons bury their fathers and in war fathers bury their sons.”
― Herodotus

“If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably—after careful considerations of their relative merits—choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best.”
― Herodotus, The Histories

“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, The Histories

“But this I know: if all mankind were to take their troubles to market with the idea of exchanging them, anyone seeing what his neighbor's troubles were like would be glad to go home with his own.”
― Herodotus, The Histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus

“The most hateful grief of all human griefs is this, to have knowledge of the truth but no power over the event.”
― Herodotus

“Men trust their ears less than their eyes.”
― Herodotus

“The worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.”
― Herodotus

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt, Strenuous Life

“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.”
― Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life, Essays and Addresses

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery: An Autobiography

“Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery

“I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery

“The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery

“I early learned that it is a hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him, and that this is more often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy actions performed than by calling attention alone to all the evil done.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery: an autobiography

“It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of those privileges.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery: an autobiography