Quotes — what extraordinary people have to say about life

Henry Thoreau

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Carl Gustav Jung

We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more.

Sigmund Freud

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.

Abraham Lincoln

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

Erich Fromm

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.

Man’s main task is to give birth to himself.

Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.

There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.

Miguel de Cervantes

What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman's mind?

A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty.