Inspiring Quotations Here is
a compilation of inspirational and provocative quotes, sayings and
proverbs which we've used on our web site and our email newsletters.
Maybe you can use them too! We'll be updating this page now and
again.
A-E F-J
K-L M-N O-S
T-Z
O
We are the ones we have been waiting for. We
are the change that we seek.
- Barack Obama
Work! The one great sacrament of humanity from
which all other things flow - security, leisure, joy, art, literature,
even divinity itself.
- Sean O'Casey (1884-1964)
You have to protect yourself from the sadness.
Sadness is very close to hate. Let me tell you this. This is the
thing I learned. If you take in someone else’s poison –
thinking you can cure them by sharing it - you will instead store
it within you.
- Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
I am up to my neck with our leaders, politicians
and thinkers, who spread their influence and create our realities
by encircling us with dread.
- Ben Okri
Giving money and power to government is like
giving whisky and car keys to teenage boys.
- PJ O'Rourke
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night
only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
- George Orwell
Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where
you least expect it, there will be a fish.
- Ovid
P
She
that would make her own liberty secure, must guard even her enemy
from oppression; for if she violates this duty she establishes a
precedent that will reach herself.
- Thomas Paine
A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood.
- General George Smith Patton
Problems are to the mind what exercise is to
the muscles, they toughen and make them strong.
- Norman Vincent Peale
We tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing
and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress,
while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.
- Gaius Petronius, AD 66
I think, therefore I am.
I believe, therefore I will be.
I am mindful, therefore I am aware.
I study, therefore I know.
I do, therefore I become.
I learn, therefore I am no longer the same.
- Yeow Poon
Q
R I wanted a perfect
ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t
rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle
and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the
moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going
to happen next.
- Gilda Radner
Research has shown that boredom is closely related
to frustration and that the effect of too much frustration is invariably
irritability, withdrawal, rebellious opposition or aggressive rejection.
- Fritz Redl, When We Deal With Children
All politics are based on the indifference of
the majority.
- James Reston
My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed. I have to cast my lot with those who
age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute
the world.
- Adrienne Rich
Democracy isn’t a spectator sport. It’s
government of the people and by the people – in other words,
a political process that works only to the extent that we participate.
- Mary Robinson
Women are like tea bags; put them in hot water
and they get stronger.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in
which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the
thing which you think you cannot do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
The whole problem with the world is that fools
and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people
so full of doubts.
- Bertrand Russell
S
Nothing, in truth, can replace camaraderie. Nothing can match
the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of
quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Among other things, you’ll find that you’re
not the first person who was confused and frightened and even sickened
by human behavior.
- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Fast as the wind, quiet as a forest, aggressive
as fire, and immovable as a mountain.
- Samurai battle banner
I shall be honored to go to jail. Under a dictatorship,
the detention cell is a place of honor.
- Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago
People single me out for being an activist, but
I always say that the impulse is inborn - it just needs to be nurtured.
It starts when you're little, and you see some kids being unkind
to another kid on the bus. Maybe you do something. Maybe you don't.
But there was that little hint in your brain that something was
wrong, that you weren't comfortable with the situation. Throughout
your life, you have the opportunity to learn from that experience,
to react to that little voice inside of you that says something
has crossed your moral bottom line, and honor your impulse. The
very core of being an activist is being true to yourself.
- Susan Sarandon
The great blessings of mankind are within us
and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and like people in the
dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding
it.
- Seneca
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good
and ill together. Our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped
them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished
by our virtues.
- William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well
If a person cannot walk into the middle of the
town square and express her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment,
or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society,
not a free society.
- Nathan Sharansky
Some places are too evil to be allowed to exist.
- Dan Simmons, Song of Kal
The test of tolerance comes when we are in a
majority. The test of courage comes when we are in a minority.
- Ralph W. Sockman
For me justice is the first condition of humanity.
- Wole Soyinka
It is enough that the people know there was
an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people
who count the votes decide everything.
- Josef Stalin
When we choose to love, we commit an act of liberation
as courageous and radical as any foray into the tear gas.
- Starhawk
The main obstacle to the creation of a well-informed
public is its own indifference.
- I.F. Stone
It is foolish to fear what you cannot avoid.
- Publilius Syrus
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