“Why should I practice running slow? I already know how to run slow. I want to learn to run fast.”
Emil Zátopek, long-distance running legend, 1922-2000

“That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy – a game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make a duty, or a battleground, or a prison of it, but that does not make it any prettier.”
Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it’s cowardice.”
George Jackson

“I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.”
Oscar Wilde

“Remember you must live, remember you must die.”
Jeanette Winterson: « […] and at the beginning of Lighthousekeeping there are two quotes. One is from Muriel Spark, a fabulous writer I very much admire, and the quote is “Remember you must die”, which is important… And the second quote is from a young writer I also very much admire, a British writer called Ali Smith, who wrote Hotel World which some of you may know, and her quote to take course from Muriel Spark is: “Remember you must live”. And it seems to me that these two things, from the beginning of the book set the tone for what I want to do. Of course we are bounded, none of us are immortal: we only have a short span. But let’s do with it everything that we can. »

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
Martin Niemöller, First they came…

“Wisdom is the province of the aged, but the heart of a child is pure.”
Peter Sellers as Hrundi V. Bakshi in Blake Edwards’ comedy The Party

“C’est drôle la vie : quand on est gosse le temps n’en finit pas de se traîner, puis du jour au lendemain on a comme ça cinquante ans.”
Maurice Bénichou as Dominique Bretodeau in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Sir Winston Churchill

“Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.”
Paul Saffo

“Being early is the same as being wrong.”
Joe Kraus

“These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.”
Jorge Luis Borges, The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

“Everything would be in its blind volumes. Everything: the detailed history of the future, Aeschylus’ The Egyptians, the exact number of times that the waters of the Ganges have reflected the flight of a falcon, the secret and true nature of Rome, the encyclopedia Novalis would have constructed, my dreams and half-dreams at dawn on August 14, 1934, the proof of Pierre Fermat’s theorem, the unwritten chapters of Edwin Drood, those same chapters translated into the language spoken by the Garamantes, the paradoxes Berkeley invented concerning Time but didn’t publish, Urizen’s books of iron, the premature epiphanies of Stephen Dedalus, which would be meaningless before a cycle of a thousand years, the Gnostic Gospel of Basilides, the song the sirens sang, the complete catalog of the Library, the proof of the inaccuracy of that catalog. Everything: but for every sensible line or accurate fact there would be millions of meaningless cacophonies, verbal farragoes, and babblings. Everything: but all the generations of mankind could pass before the dizzying shelves — shelves that obliterate the day and on which chaos lies — ever reward them with a tolerable page.”
Jorge Luis Borges, La biblioteca total

“If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.”
Robert X. Cringely

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

[…]

The man’s foremost duty is owed to himself and his family; and he can do this duty only by earning money, by providing what is essential to material well-being; it is only after this has been done that he can hope to build a higher superstructure on the solid material foundation; it is only after this has been done that he can help in his movements for the general well-being. He must pull his own weight first, and only after this can his surplus strength be of use to the general public. It is not good to excite that bitter laughter which expresses contempt; and contempt is what we feel for the being whose enthusiasm to benefit mankind is such that he is a burden to those nearest him; who wishes to do great things for humanity in the abstract, but who cannot keep his wife in comfort or educate his children.”
Theodore Roosevelt, The Man in the Arena, address delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, on April 23, 1910.

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.”
Blaise Pascal

“Two shoe salesmen go to a remote area and both telegram back about the prospects. One said: « Prospects grim, they never wear shoes here. » The other said: « Prospects are incredible, they don’t have shoes yet! » “
Benjamin Zander, author and conductor of Boston Philharmonic

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Marianne Williamson, A return to love

“I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”
Alan Greenspan as quoted by Rebecca Saxe in her TED talk about about how our brain understands what others think