They Said What.... Famous Quotes From Famous People!

And so, my fellow americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), Inaugural address, January 20, 1961

We make war that we may live in peace.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), Nichomachean Ethics

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
Chinese Proverb

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 1997

Love is everything it's cracked up to be…It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.
Erica Jong, O Magazine, February 2004

Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love, though I'd stepped in it a few times.
Rita Rudner

Love is an irresistable desire to be irresistably desired.
Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC)

Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.
Agnes Repplier (1855 - 1950), Americans and Others, 1912

You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.
Michael Pritchard

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
John Lennon (1940 - 1980), "Beautiful Boy"

The unexamined life is not worth living for man.
Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC), in Plato, Dialogues, Apology

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
Aesop (620 BC - 560 BC), The Lion and the Mouse

I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Ettiene De Grellet

Sometimes when we are generous in small, barely detectable ways it can change someone else's life forever.
Margaret Cho, weblog, 03-11-04

The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Knowledge is power.
Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626), Religious Meditations, Of Heresies, 1597

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC), from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

May your walls know joy; May every room hold laughter and every window open to great possibility.
Maryanne Radmacher-Hershey, 1995

Joy is not in things; it is in us.
Richard Wagner

There is no greater joy nor greater reward than to make a fundamental difference in someone's life.
Sister Mary Rose McGeady

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana (1863 - 1952), The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), Pro Publio Sestio

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
George Moore

While there's life, there's hope.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), Ad Atticum

I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967), Incidentals (1907)

If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play at it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.
Bob Hope (1903 - 2003)

There isn’t much better in this life than finding a way to spend a few hours in conversation with people you respect and love. You have to carve this time out of your life because you aren’t really living without it.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, August 27, 2003
Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.
Jane Howard, "Families"

Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
Dorothy Bernard

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), "Back to Methuselah" (1921), part 1, act 1

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.
Albert Camus (1913 - 1960)

Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.
Elmer G. Letterman

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.
Jack London (1876 - 1916)

If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.
Bruce Barton

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.
Rabbinical Saying

The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.
Sam Levenson (1911 - 1980)

Man is what he believes.
Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904)

In America any boy may become President and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes.
Adlai E. Stevenson Jr. (1900 - 1965), Speech in Indianapolis, 26 Sept. 1952

I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American.
Daniel Webster (1782 - 1852)