Top 100 Or Not Quotes
#1. I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.
Max Beerbohm
#2. It sounds old-fashioned to say, but we have some kind of purpose for being here, not poets or writers, but all of us humans.
Pattiann Rogers
#3. Utopia is in the moment. Not in some future time, some other place, but in the here and now, or else it is nowhere.
Alfred Stieglitz
#4. I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream.
Mark Strand
#5. to read or not to read... that is a silly question
Harlequin
#6. I would caution anyone who thinks the solution is to get out to realize that Iraq will be our problem, whether we're there or not, for years to come. It will not be Vietnam; it will not let us go home and lick our wounds.
George Packer
#7. You reach a point in life where you realize that you might as well do what you need to do, because your being loved or not being loved is really a function of the people you encounter and not of yourself. That is an immensely liberating insight.
Erica Jong
#8. If I had more time, I'd watch more woodworking or home-improvement shows, but, not enough hours in the day.
Nick Offerman
#9. I would not be standing here today if my skin were white or my religion were Presbyterian. I am here today only because my skin is yellow and my religion is Unification Church. The ugliest things in this beautiful country of America are religious bigotry and racism.
Sun Myung Moon
#10. The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of room, not try to be or do anything whatever.
May Sarton
#12. Even the dumber parts of our government are not run by idiots. These are ordinary people like us, doing a job. By and large, they're trying to do it as well as they can. Or at least as often as people in the private sector try to do as well as they can.
P. J. O'Rourke
#13. But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.
T. S. Eliot
#14. Guys like him ruin it for everybody else. It's just embarrassing. Or maybe he's not embarrassed because he probably believes he's not doing it-that's how liars are.
Chris Chelios
#15. Enlightenment does not mean that your ego is suppressed or denied. It does mean that it is deconstructed, seen through, exposed, and then reeducated and reconstructed.
Jun Po Roshi
#16. It's as if the universe has a sense of humor, since at a deep level it's impossible not to lead a spiritual life ...
the universe is living through you at this moment. with or without belief in god, the chain of events leading from silent awareness to physical reality remains intact.
Deepak Chopra
#17. One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn't even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.
Albert Camus
#18. I never thought of myself as a Broadway actress. I'm not really a singer or a dancer.
Spencer Kayden
#19. I try not to listen to the shoulds or coulds, and try to get beyond expectations, peer pressure, or trying to please - and just listen. I believe all the answers are ultimately within us.
Kim Cattrall
#20. I'm not a masochistic reader. If something is just too dense or not enjoyable, even though I'm told it should be good for me, I'll put it down. That said, most of what I read would be considered high-end or good for you, I suppose. But, I also think that reading should be enjoyable.
Josh Radnor
#21. Could not decide whether he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world. It
Virginia Woolf
#22. A man demonstrates his rationality, not by a commitment to fixed ideas, stereotyped procedures, or immutable concepts, but by the manner in which, and the occasions on which, he changes those ideas, procedures, and concepts.
Stephen Toulmin
#24. A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything's going to be all right. you've made it past Dead Man's Curve and you're out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not.
Haruki Murakami
#25. I try not to notice the exploded eyeballs or the ruptured tongue bursting through the blackened lips. This job is quite gross enough as it is without adding my own dry heaves to the mess.
Charles Stross
#26. If one defends the bourgeois, philistine virtues, one does not defend them merely from the demonism or bohemianism of the artist but from the present bourgeoisie itself.
Lionel Trilling
#27. It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.
Thomas Paine
#28. I can say this: don't give up. Not on love but, more important still, not on you. Never let yourself believe that you are unlovable or flawed in any way. You deserve to be loved. You deserve kind words and an unwavering eye.
Menna Van Praag
#29. I really love diving in, head first, with directing and not having to worry about hair, makeup or lines.
Chris Lowell
#30. I believe faith is a journey, not something that we fix when it goes wrong or that we have to follow in a set required way, but something that is always opening up in front of us with the people me meet and the things we do, becoming more meaningful along the way.
Phil Mitchell
#31. You have to be careful not to use anything too colloquial or you date the book.
Chris Crutcher
#32. There's really not much in life that's as violent or traumatic as an encounter with somebody who really surprises you and opens up that strange dynamic that's involved in romantic love.
John Maus
#33. There's nothing wrong with sexual feelings in themselves, so long as they are straightforward and not sneaking or sly. The right sort of sex stimulus is invaluable to human daily life. Without it the world grows grey.
D.H. Lawrence
#34. Helping others
I order you to assist any oppressed person, whether he is a Moslem or not.
Idries Shah
#35. Do not try to prove that you are the most important person or that you are the lord's anointed
Sunday Adelaja
#36. When you break into song, it's not about dialogue, it's not about how you would speak in a naturalistic sense-it's about expressing your inner torment or your inner joy.
Julie Taymor
#37. They say that family is the place of safety. But sometimes this is the greatest lie; family is not sanctuary, it is not safety and succour. For some of us, it is the secret wound. Sooner or later we pay for the woundings of our ancestors.
Nayomi Munaweera
#38. The days of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burke's grand dirge over them; they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a youth and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touch so much as her little finger or the hem of her robe.
George Eliot
#39. Sooner or later I'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire.
Margaret Mead
#40. Excessive drinking is not good for my health, my family or my game. There has definitely been a change, and I feel better for it.
Ernie Els
#41. He [God] chooses not to intervene in the world. Why not? Because he figures he's done enough and the rest is up to us? Or he wouldn't know where to begin? Or because he's in awe of his own miracle? That's how I picture him, his mouth slightly agape, his eyes wide in disbelief.
Jon Cohen
#42. I am not ridiculing verbal mechanisms, dreams, or repressions as origins of poetry; all three of them and more besides may have a great deal to do with it.
Allen Tate
#43. You have to like the present; if not your life becomes secondhand, if you think it was better before. Or that it will be better in the future.
Karl Lagerfeld
#44. I fire people that win gold medals, great champions, everything else, and, you know, it's not - it's not easy. People say oh well it comes easy for me, it doesn't. And it's never fun. It's all to easier though when I don't like somebody or when they're really, really bad then it becomes much easier.
Donald Trump
#45. Well, the thought that everybody might have a personal computer at their desk or their home was certainly not on the mainstream of anybody's activity at that time.
Jack Kilby
#46. I believe that whatever we have, regardless of a trade being done or not, I feel we have a shot. I've just got to believe that we're going to be all right. I've got to just play basketball.
Allen Iverson
#47. When I was a kid, there was no distinction between a movie about old people or young people. It was either funny or not. It was either entertaining or not. It was either exciting or not. It was either thrilling or not.
Joseph Bologna
#48. God does not deem you to be lucky or unlucky ... you're mindset does.
Robert Kiyosaki
#49. The reason God commands us to love Him with all our heart is not because He is an egomaniac! It is because He knows that anything we love more than Him will betray us. Eventually, we lose it by its death . . . or ours.
Matt Papa
#50. Someday I hope Americans will not believe that anyone had to spend his or her days fighting for limited government because everyone they know wants maximum freedom and minimum statism.
Grover Norquist
#51. Grace is not a doctrine or a religion. It is a person, Jesus Christ.
John Paul Warren
#52. When you first read a script is the purest moment. That's when you can understand how an audience will ultimately receive it. The first reading of the script is so important because you're experiencing it all for the first time, and it's then that you really know if it's going to work or not.
David Tennant
#54. Man's natural life span, 75 to 90 years or so, has not increased. It is the number of us who manage to attain it that has increased.
Andrew Tobias
#55. There is less alms-giving in America than in any other Christian country on the face of the globe. It is not in the temper of the people either to give or to receive.
Frances Trollope
#56. How humid the heart, its messy rooms! We eat spicy food, sweat like wood and smolder like the coal mine that caught fire decades ago, yet still smokes more than my great-uncle who will not quit- or go out-
Kevin Young
#57. In almost every photograph I have ever made, there is something I would do to complete it. I take that to be the spirit hole or the deliberate mistake that's in a Navajo rug to not be godlike, but to be human.
Sam Abell
#58. Spare time is like spare change. It's hard to quantify, the definition of that phrase. What do I do when I'm not onstage singing, or sleeping, with or without someone else? I watch movies.
Marilyn Manson
#59. It's amazing how books change. The chapter you're working on today would not have been the same if you wrote it yesterday or tomorrow.
Raymond Bolton
#60. Although I have always rejected this fear of the other, and the racism that it inevitably fuels, I have learned from experience that it is a deeply rooted need in the human psyche. at the slightest provocation we will put distance between ourselves and those we cannot or do not want to understand
Susan Nathan
#61. No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his brother. Not for millions, not for glory, not for fame. For one person, in the dark where no one will ever know or see.
J. Michael Straczynski
#62. A lot is gained through experience, but experience teaches some and not others. Effectiveness and excellence, whether or not they were attained by simply having the knack or through the school of hard knocks, is really what you want to reward.
Caterina Fake
#63. Achievers are not scared to make mistakes or to fail because they are willing to learn from them. They are determined to start all over again and again until they grasp the concept.
Euginia Herlihy
#64. The government (or humanity) would not permit capital punishment for one man, but they permitted the murder of millions a little at a time.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
#65. Entropy is not about speeds or positions of particles, the way temperature and pressure and volume are, but about our lack of information.
Hans Christian Von Baeyer
#66. There is no act of love that is not an act of work or courage. No exceptions.
M. Scott Peck
#67. The true strength of rulers and empires lies not in armies or emotions, but in the belief of men that they are inflexibly open and truthful and legal. As soon as a government departs from that standard it ceases to be anything more than 'the gang in possession,' and its days are numbered.
H.G.Wells
#68. When spring knocks at your door, regardless of the time of year or season of our lives, run, do not walk to that door, throw it open with wild abandon, and say, Yes! Yes, come in! Do me, and do me big!
Jeffrey R. Anderson
#69. The best legacy you could leave is not some building that is names after you or a piece of jewelry but rather a world that has been impacted and touched by your presence, your joy, and your positive actions.
Jon Gordon
#70. And on the way, we'll have plenty of time to talk or not talk about whatever's on your mind
Justin Somper
#71. I'm not going to hold my breath because life goes on. Life is too short to sit around moaning about what could have been or what was.
Tina Weymouth
#72. I don't think they's luck or bad luck. On'y one thing in this worl' I'm sure of, an' that's I'm sure nobody got a right to mess with a fella's life. He got to do it all hisself. Help him, maybe, but not tell him what to do.
John Steinbeck
#73. Not to marry, know love, or bind, their fate;
Your line to die for never seed shall take.
Death and torment to those caught in their wake,
unless each son finds his forechosen mate...
For his true lady alone his life and heart can save.
Kresley Cole
#74. Religion is realization; not talk, nor doctrine, nor theories however beautiful they may be. It is being and becoming, not hearing, or acknowledging; it is the whole soul becoming what it believes.
Swami Vivekananda
#75. I would say I don't like people who are really into themselves or are very materialistic. Just always talking themselves up. Not being real is the pet peeve. Be true to yourself.
Austin Stowell
#76. But more importantly, you are a gift, to all who know you, whether or not they realize it. If they don't, they are blind. You have a special place in this world. All you hvae to do is find it.
Ellen Hopkins
#77. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned or scorched, nor will flame kindle upon you.
Anonymous
#78. I'm learning with the older that I get that some feelings are just universal and that I'm not the only one who hates their hair or their life at times.
Brie Larson
#79. Life is to be lived as a magnificent adventure, or not at all.
Helen Keller
#80. They realize their ultimate doom, but they are fatalists, incapable of resistance or escape. Not one of the present generation has been out of sight of these walls.
Robert E. Howard
#81. A lot of progressives really believe that if we can turn out one more white paper with bullet points about how to fix Problem X, we can fix it. But that's not primarily the way you reach people or move them. You reach the heart first.
Robert Greenwald
#82. I think everyone has been annoyed at school or in their life, that's a type of bullying. So, you can take those feelings and make them bigger. But I try not to use too much from my real life, because you'll be stuck with that all day.
Kodi Smit-McPhee
#83. The business conduct of the disciples of wise men is truthful and faithful ... He does not allow himself to be made a surety or a guarantor and does not accept the power of attorney ... He lends money and is gracious. He shall not take away business from his fellow man.
Maimonides
#84. Imponderable Sir, I presume from some if not all of your many reputations that you might prefer honest and convinced unbelief to the hypocritical and self-interested affectation of faith or the smoking tributes of bloody altars.
Christopher Hitchens
#85. If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance.
Marcus Aurelius
#86. I go back and forth as to whether I think Nancy Pelosi's really this dumb or not. Although, every time I hear her speak I get closer and closer to concluding that she is this dumb.
Rush Limbaugh
#87. I don't think there's any country that has equal pay, not even Sweden or Iceland.
Gloria Steinem
#88. Believe me that in every big thing or achievement there are always obstacles-big or small- and the reaction one shows to such obstacles is what counts, not the obstacle itself.
Bruce Lee
#89. While new rights are attributed to or indeed almost presumed by the individual, life is not always protected as the primary value and the primordial right of every human being. The ultimate aim of medicine remains the defence and promotion of life.
Pope Francis
#90. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's the wounded male ego. It's as though Hollywood thinks I've got some choice in whether I like him or not. As if. I can't change who I am.
Kirsty Eagar
#91. I hated being a child because to be a child means that you are essentially the property of your parents, benevolently or not.
Molly Crabapple
#92. With a book tucked in one hand, and a computer shoved under my elbow, I will march, not sidle, shudder or quake, into the twenty-first century.
Ray Bradbury
#93. Whether you are from Minnesota, Wisconsin or any other Northern tier state, you are not going to like the reimbursement formula. The problem we face is that we wouldn't have that formula if a majority of the states didn't like it, and they have the majority of the votes.
Dave Obey
#94. I never took my SAT's. I never applied to college. I moved right out here and jumped into the thick of things. Whether that was the smart move or not, I'm sitting here talking to you now, so it paid off.
Scott Foley
#95. Most people are always doubtful as to whether they are happy or not, cheerful or not. This is the normal state of happiness, as doubt is a most natural thing.
Yukio Mishima
#96. If at first you don't succeed, sure, try again ... but if you keep not succeeding, you should probably concentrate on something (or someone) else worthwhile & quit wasting your time.
Ingrid Weir
#97. Consider your actions and words. Be thoughtful when expressing your feelings or concerns. Sometimes it's not what you say, but the way you say it. That makes all the difference
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
#98. Since shotguns are not military weapons, your local sporting goods dealer will have good information about them, as long as you aren't black, Spanish, or a white freak.
William Powell
#99. It appears, then, to be a condition of a genuinely scientific hypothesis, that it be not destined always to remain an hypothesis, but be certain to be either proved or disproved by..comparison with observed facts.
John Stuart Mill
