c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
We had come from lecture halls, school desks and factory workbenches, and over the brief weeks of training, we had bonded together into one large and enthusiastic group. Grown up in an age of security, we shared a yearning for danger, for the experience of the extraordinary. We were enraptured by war.
— Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel
In a curious failure of comprehension, I looked alertly about me for possible targets for all this artillery fire, not, apparently, realizing that it was actually ourselves that the enemy gunners were trying for all they were worth to hit.
— Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel
On the Ridgeway path, aged nine or ten, was where for the first time I realized the power a person might feel by aligning themselves to deep history. Only much later did I understand these intimations of history had their own, darker, history. The chalk country-cult rested on a presumption of organic connections to a landscape, a sense of belonging sanctified through an appeal to your own imagined lineage. That chalk downloads held their national, as well as natural, histories. And it was much later, too, that I realized that these myths hurt. That they work to wipe away other cultures, other histories, other ways of loving, working and being in a landscape. How they tiptoe towards darkness.
— Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk
Perhaps, all these years, the historiographers had been unwilling to recognize history as a spiral, perhaps because a spiral was so difficult to describe. Easier to photograph the spiral from the top, easier to flatten the spring into a coil.
— Anthony Burgess, The Wanting Seed
Every one’s footprint is a landmark in the world history
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
He insisted on clearing the table, and again devoted himself to his game of patience: piecing together the map of Paris, the bits of which he’d stuffed into the pocket of his raincoat, folded up any old how.I helped him.Then he asked me, straight out, ‘What would you say was the true centre of Paris?’I was taken aback, wrong-footed. I thought this knowledge was part of a whole body of very rarefied and secret lore. Playing for time, I said, ‘The starting point of France’s roads . . . the brass plate on the parvis of Notre-Dame.’He gave me a withering look.‘Do you take for me a sap?’The centre of Paris, a spiral with four centres, each completely self-contained, independent of the other three. But you don’t reveal this to just anybody. I suppose - I hope - it was in complete good faith that Alexandre Arnoux mentioned the lamp behind the apse of St-Germain-l’Auxerrois. I wouldn’t have created that precedent. My turn now to let the children play with the lock.‘The centre, as you must be thinking of it, is the well of St-Julien-le-Pauvre. The “Well of Truth” as it’s been known since the eleventh century.’He was delighted. I’d delivered. He said, ‘You know, you and I could do great things together. It’s a pity I’m already “beyond redemption”, even at this very moment.’His unhibited display of brotherly affection was of childlike spontaneity. But he was still pursuing his line of thought: he dashed out to the nearby stationery shop and came back with a little basic pair of compasses made of tin.‘Look. The Vieux-Chene, the Well. The Well, the Arbre-a-Liege On either side of the Seine, adhering closely to the line he’d drawn, the age-old tavern signs were at pretty much the same distance from the magic well.‘Well, now, you see, it’s always been the case that whenever something bad happens at the Vieux-Chene, a month later — a lunar month, that is, just twenty-eight days — the same thing happens at old La Frite’s place, but less serious. A kind of repeat performance. An echoThen he listed, and pointed out on the map, the most notable of those key sites whose power he or his friends had experienced.In conclusion he said, ‘I’m the biggest swindler there is, I’m prepared to be swindled myself, that’s fair enough. But not just anywhere. There are places where, if you lie, or think ill, it’s Paris you disrespect. And that upsets me. That’s when I lose my cool: I hit back. It’s as if that’s what I was there for.
— Jacques Yonnet, Paris Noir: The Secret History of a City
Life consists of books.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Ten years later, I will be able to say, "I saw future happen". And, this is the most rewarding part of what I do.
— Sharad Vivek Sagar
History is nothing if not far-fetched.
— Albert O. Hirschman
The life of the spirit is enfold in great literature.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
The greatest literature is the Biblical stories.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
You can forget Stalin,” he said, pledging his allegiance. “We’re not the History Channel.
— Timur Vermes, Er ist wieder da
The ‘Oberge des Mailletz’ is by far the oldest tavern of which any record can found in the City archives. In 1292, Adam des Mailletz, inn-keeper, paid a tithe of 18 sous and 6 deniers.This we learn from the Tax Register of the period. At the time it was founded, the Trois-Mailletz was the meeting place of masons, who under the supervision of Jehan de Chelles, carved out of white stone the biblical characters destined to grace the north and south choirs of Notre-Dame. Underneath the building, there are two floors of superimposed cellars: the deeper ones date from the Gallo-Roman period. What remains of the instruments of torture found in the cellars of the Petit-Châtelet have been housed here, along with some other restored objects.A modest bar counter, a long-haired patron who bizarrely manages never to be freshly shaven or downright bearded. A stove in the middle of the shabby room; simple straightforward folk, less drunk than at Rue de Bièvre, and less dirty. Just what we needed.
— Jacques Yonnet, Paris Noir: The Secret History of a City
Every sacred existence is history of time.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Because of the collapsing economy of America, it is nearly a mathematical certainty that this ship will soon flounder.
— Nicholas Notarberardino, The Economics of Sovereignty: A Citizen's Guide to Saving America
History must be documented
—  every moment is a sacred history.
Most world-historic events - great military battles, political revolutions-are self-consciously historic to the participants living through them. They act knowing that their decisions will be chronicled and dissected for decades or centuries to come. But epidemics create a kind of history from below: they can be world-changing, but the participants are almost inevitably ordinary folk, following their established routines, not thinking for a second about how their actions will be recorded for prosperity. And of course, if they do recognize that they are living through a historical crisis, it's often too late- because, like it or not, the primary way that ordinary people create this distinct genre of history is by dying.
— Steven Johnson
The story we write today will support the next generation.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Improving upon nature is the very essence of plant breeding, and so it goes to the heart of one of the central debates of the human condition: the relationship between humanity and nature and the degree to which the human race has a right (or indeed a responsibility) to change plant life for its own ends.
— Noël Kingsbury, Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding
Ancient literature is a rich history.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Historical gap is created due to missing written records.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Sometimes shows became almost obsessively obscure, as with the gooseberry (Ribes uva-crispa) shows of nineteenth-century Britain, when workingmen in the industrial counties of northern England and the Midlands formed themselves into societies, constituted with presidents, secretaries, and stewards, for the purpose of running gooseberry shows—weight being the decisive factor. Quite why this fruit, always something of a minority taste, should become the subject of what only could be described as a cult remains a mystery.
— Noël Kingsbury, Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding
Any experience, which is not written, will be lost in time. Rich literature is lost forever.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Life consists of books. All experiences are stories to be told and must be written.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
So then the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association merged to create the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which personally I think is rather a mouthful,' Adelaide said as she set down her wineglass.'I'm sure others have much shorter terms,' the doctor said, sawing into his steak with more vigor than necessary.'Such as?' Grace asked.'There are plenty who just call us bitches, dear.
— Mindy McGinnis, A Madness So Discreet
When Pope Pius XII died, LIFE magazine carried a picture of him in his private study kneeling before a black Christ. What was the source of their information? All white people who have studied history and geography know that Christ was a black man. Only the poor, brainwashed American Negro has been made to believe that Christ was white, to maneuver him into worshiping the white man. After becoming a Muslim in prison, I read almost everything I could put my hands on in the prison library. I began to think back on everything I had read and especially with the histories, I realized that nearly all of them read by the general public have been made into white histories. I found out that the history-whitening process either had left out great things that black men had done, or some of the great black men had gotten whitened.
— Malcolm X
The only lesson you can learn from history is that it repeats itself
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
If we make our own history, if we tell stories that bring us together, we'll be stronger. It'll give us something to believe in. The sickos can't do that – they're no better than animals – but we can. Every battle we win we have to tell the story over and over, so that we can win more battles. People love stories. They've told stories since even before they could write. Myths and legends, stories of heroes and villains, gods and monsters. Real things happened, the story got told and then the stories became legends. That's what we've got to do – tell our own heroic stories.
— Charlie Higson, The Fear
History does not remember the forgettable. It honors the unique minority the majority cannot forget.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
The historian without his facts is rootless and futile
—  the facts without their historian are dead and meaningless.
An historian is a kind detective in search of the fact — remote or otherwise - that brings to a set of events apparently unconnected with each other, the link that unites them, their justification, their logic.You cannot imagine what great delights this profession affords. It’s as if, in every incunablum, consumed by worms and steeped in boredom, in every inarticulate scrawl, in every collection of forgotten chronicles, there presides a mischievous sprite, winking at you, who at the appropriate time confers on you your reward in the form of renewed wonder.
— Jacques Yonnet, Paris Noir: The Secret History of a City
The present is never tidy, or certain, or reasonable, and those who try to make it so once it becomes the past succeed only in making it seem implausible.
— William Manchester, The Last Lion 2: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-40
I like a puzzle, as you know. So does every scholar worth his salt. It's the reward of the business, to look history in the eye and say, 'I know who you are. You can't fool me'.
— Elizabeth Kostova
I like ethics." The question of morality, how and why do people behave in certain ways. "And the principle of knowledge." I continue, "I've read this one." I show him On Certainty (book) by Ludwig Wittgenstein wrapped in my hand."An intelligent one, that is, though, modern mind rarely appreciates such kind of writing. Not any more. I studied philosophy myself, and you know what I think? Every branch of knowledge needs philosophy for it helps to organise the flow of ideas and articulate meanings.I could not agree more to that. "Do you think it will be deserted one day?""Probably. Nobody will bother about it any more, just like history. What is the only thing people become more interested in nowadays?" he asks. "Making money." His thumb rubs repeatedly over the tip of the index finger. "Philosophy and history are considered as eccentric. They don't usually offer people high income, and that's the inexorable reality. We've got to deal with it anyhow.
— Aishah Madadiy, Bits of Heaven
Fear of death, wonder at the causes of chance events or unintelligible happenings, hope for divine aid and gratitude for good fortune, cooperated to generate religious belief.
— Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage
A decent man would stand out like a cactus on an ice floe.
— Timothy Egan
We trust ourselves, far more than our ancestors did… The root of our predicament lies in the simple fact that, though we remain a flawed and unstable species, plagued now as in the past by a thousand weaknesses, we have insisted on both unlimited freedom and unlimited power. It would now seem clear that, if we want to stop the devastation of the earth, the growing threats to our food, water, air, and fellow creatures, we must find some way to limit both.
— Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West
Hanging out is good historical methodology.
— Jean Pfaelzer
To tell a ghost story means being willing to be haunted.
— Judith "Jack" Halberstam
[W]orship, if not the child, is at leastthe brother, of fear.
— Will Durant
Upon reading, great stories by Great Spirits, the glorious inspiration penetrated our soul; we can’t help but to shed tears. It was a soul soothing and a deep spiritual awaken.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
We are wanderers, place shifters, the cosmic homeless. This is not a modern truth, and Achilles is not some new kind of existentialist hero. It is the oldest truth of all, surviving uncomfortably into the modern world of cities and overkings, diplomacy and accommodation, the power structures and the proliferation of stuff which the Mediterranean world provides.
— Adam Nicolson
This formidable officine dates from Peter the Great, who formed it in 1697...its historic origins must, however, be looked for much earlier; one finds them in the byzantine traditions and in the operations of the Tartar domination...espionage, delation, torture, and secret executions were the normal and regulating instruments of the |||||||| police.
— Maurice Paléologue
Life and history have repeatedly taught us that values and virtues are far much stronger than the physical wealth we often see. For material wealth emanates from values and virtues.
— Sunday Adelaja
You know the greatest lesson of history? It's that history is whatever the victors say it is...Whoever wins, that's who decides the history.
— Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
The marketplace is an institution that teaches self-advancement, private acquisition, and the domination of nature. Its way of thinking is incompatible with the round river. Ecological harmony is a nonmarket value that takes a collective will to achieve.
— Donald Worster, Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination
There lived great souls in history.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
The truth, at times, can be the hardest pill to swallow. When we are confronted by something new, something that threatens to shake us from our comfortable tree, shatters our illusions, we resist. It takes courage to swim against the tide of popular opinion. Most of us would rather hold on to the safety buoy than strike out into unchartered seas. If you are one of these, don't bother to read this true account of the Frankenstein myth, hold tightly to your buoy and be carried to the shores of the known and familiar, you will be safe. I do not wish to make you feel uncomfortable in your skin, that is not my aim. My goal is to set the story straight and not pander to the fickle minded.This version of events is so far removed from the common misguided perceptions held by us all, and will so challenge the accepted beliefs generated by cheap fiction, that there will be many who will call me charlatan or fraud. They do not possess the will, or wherewithal, to want to know the truth or even suspend their judgement so that the record might be set straight for posterity. Possibly, they might be the last remnants of the flat earth society and still trying to convince the rest of us where we are going wrong. If nothing else, I salute their commitment and tenacity. This book is not for them.There it is. I have forewarned you against reading this account of the tortured genius of Baron von Frankenstein. If you are not ready for the truth, stay safe and warm in your insulated ivory towers and remain ignorant of the catastrophe that befell him and the people of the town of Frankenstein. It is not my loss...
— Paul Lord
Culture is the best society has to offer...How can we pass on civilization to those who do not value civilization. (Terrence Rattigan)
— Beth Fine, The Picaresque of Imagine Purple
Terry took the silence as acquiescence, “The other way to make money is to exploit people, oh, no sorry, that’s the ‘only’ way to make money, exploit other people, that’s how the billionaires have acquired all their money by exploiting others… So how did they achieve it? You’re going to love this… they changed all the rules to accommodate what they wanted to do. How I hear you ask… easy, they own the politicians, they own the banks, they own industry and they own everything. They made it easier for themselves to invest in so called emerging markets. What once would’ve been considered treasonous was now considered virtuous. Instead of building up the nation state and its resources, all of its resources, including its people, they concentrated on building up their profits. That’s all they did. They invested in parts of the world where children could be worked for 12 hours a day 7 days a week, where grown men and women could be treated like slaves and all for a pittance and they did this because we here in the west had made it illegal to work children, because we’d abolished slavery, because we had fought for workers’ rights, for a minimum wage, for a 40 hr week, for pensions, for the right to retire, for a free NHS, for free education, all of these things were getting in the way of them making a quick and easy profit and worse …had been making us feel we were worth something.
— Arun D. Ellis, Corpalism
The historian’s task is not to disrupt for the sake of it, but it is to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly. A well organized society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves.
— Tony Judt
Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened.
— Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths:  Selected Stories and Other Writings
Each era has the fatal hubris to believe that it has once and for all climbed to the top of the mountain and can see everything as it is, from the highest and most objective vantage point possible.
— Eric Metaxas, Seven Women: And the Secret of Their Greatness
The oblivion, and I'll say even the historical error, are a key factor in the creation of a nation, to the extent that the progress of historical studies is often a danger to nationality.
— Ernest Renan, Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?
The idea that in prehistoric times a man would spend his life hunting only for the benefit of his own wife and children, who were dependent solely upon his hunting prowess for survival, is simply a projection of 1950s marital norms onto the past.
— Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage
...is any history really all that ancient?...Doesn't every moment from the past affect the present?
— Margaret Peterson Haddix, Redeemed
We are still living in a wonderful new world where man thinks himself astonishingly new and "modern." This is unmistakable proof of the youthfulness of human consciousness, which has not yet grown aware of its historical antecedents.
— C.G. Jung, The Essential Jung: Selected Writings
Ah, but is any history really all that ancient?' Second asked. 'Doesn't every moment from the past affect the present?' This man was more annoying than any history teacher Jordan had ever had.
— Margaret Peterson Haddix, Redeemed
History is unkind to those it abandons, and can be equally unkind to those who make it.
— Salman Rushdie
We encounter great souls, who lived in historical times, in ancient books.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
A lot of what we know to be history isn’t…it serves a purpose. Events are exaggerated, heroes fabricated, goals are rewritten to appear more noble than they actually were. All to manipulate public opinion, to manufacture a common purpose or enemy. And the cornerstone of a really great movement? A powerful symbol. Take away or tarnish that and everything starts to crumble, everything’s questioned.
— Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead
Rhetoric is what shapes history, if not truth.
— Anna Deavere Smith, Letters to a Young Artist
It’s happened before. It’s all happened before. History is worth shit.
— Larry Kramer, The Normal Heart & The Destiny of Me
Perhaps one day someone from a distant land will listen to this story of mine. Isn't this what lies behind the desire to be inscribed in the pages of a book? Isn't it just for the sake of this delight that sultans and viziers proffer bags of gold to have their histories written?
— Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red
I want to... have fun with writing again. Enjoy my work, enjoy playing with the language and characters like a sculptor plays with clay. But there's this manic focus on numbers--how many books have you written and how many have you sold and it's all push, push, push, and no time for reflection--but at heart, books are about dreaming... which is just the opposite. So I don't know... M.M. Bennetts comment to Nancy Bilyeau as related in Nancy's tribute "M.M. Bennetts: The Closest Friend I Never Met
— M.M. Bennetts
And though, indeed, it only happened once, it’s gone on happening, the way unique and momentous things do, for ever and ever, as long as there’s a memory for them to happen in …
— Graham Swift
There lived great souls in the history of the world.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
There is no replay of yesterday.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
In our hurry of utilitarian progress, we have either forgotten the Indian altogether, or looked upon him only in a business point of view, as we do almost everything else; as a thriftless, treacherous, drunken fellow, who knows just enough to be troublesome, and who must be cajoled or forced into leaving his hunting-grounds for the occupation of very orderly and virtuous white people, who sell him gunpowder and whiskey, but send him now and then a missionary to teach him that it is wrong to get drunk and murder his neighbor.
— Mary H. Eastman, Dahcotah Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling
History...to stand in a place and know that this where you come from for a dozen generations or maybe a hundred generations or maybe more. To know there was a great city two thousand years ago in this place, and that your ancestors helped build it and lived there and worked there. When you walk down a small road, all the others who are walking there with you from before.
— David Vann
History is a succession of things that ought never to have happened, and the writing act is a kind of revenge against this.
— Breyten Breytenbach, Intimate Stranger
We travel to ancient times by reading history books.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Our life today is a history of tomorrow.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, The Alphabets of  Success: Passion Driven Life
What is it that Australians celebrate on 26 January? Significantly, many of them are not quite sure what event they are commemorating. Their state of mind fascinated Egon Kisch, an inquisitive Czech who was in Sydney at the end of January 1935. Kisch has a place in our history as the victim, or hero, of a ludicrous chapter in the history of our immigration laws. He had been invited to Melbourne for a Congress against War and Fascism, and was forbidden to land by order of the attorney-general, R. G. Menzies. He had jumped overboard, broken his leg, gone to hospital, failed a dictation test in Gaelic and been sentenced to imprisonment and deportation. When the High Court declared Gaelic not a language, Kisch was free to hobble on our soil...
— K.S. Inglis, Observing Australia: 1959���1999
We incline to see history through the lives of great men. That inclination blinds us to the real complexity …
— John Kay, Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly
Have you ever felt you were born in the wrong decade, or came just a bit too late and missed out on all the good stuff when it was in its heyday?
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
Third Reich was a term that was never used by Adolf Hitler. The term 'Third Reich' is used by so-called scholars and news journalists (and Wikipedia posters) to hide the fact that Hitler called his regime 'Socialism.' Scholars, journalists (and wakipedia) cite no example of Hitler ever using the term 'Third Reich.' Other writers use the terms 'Nazi' and 'Fascist' and 'Third Reich' as if Hitler tossed them around all the time. Those terms were not used as self-identifiers by the self-avowed socialist Hitler.
— Rex Curry
Stop explaining to others, people will only understand from their level of discernment.
— Abhysheq Shukla, The Reflection "Success or Stress"Choose Wisely
But I can't rewrite history. I can only live with what's left.
— Suzanne Young, The Treatment
I’m interested in connecting with readers and strangers through poetry. I want to create real intimacy with my poems. Whether I do that through pulling from my personal life or using my fantasy life—or say history, whether that history is personal history or our collective histories—what’s important is that an experience is created. An experience that will hopefully matter to people and feel real. I want my poems to move people and make them want to live their lives, however complicated and impossible those lives may be. I think a poem can speak to the life you currently live but also to the lives you’ve lived before, the ones to come and also those you’ve yet to imagine. What else can do that? Not sex or money or other people.
— Alex Dimitrov
When the purpose of clearly exposing the differences between the Aryan and the Tamil culture, civilization, conduct and creed Thirukkural was written. I am of that firm view.
— Periyar E.V. Ramasamy
Fear is the most prodigious enemy of our soul
— Abhysheq Shukla, The Reflection "Success or Stress"Choose Wisely
When Husni Zaim seized power from Shukri al-Quwatli on 30 March 1949, Syria's economy was a parlous state and its army had been beaten the previous November by the Israelis. Zaim knew that he needed to take action on both fronts fast. After overthrowing al-Quwatli bloodlessly, he set out to open peace talks with the Israelis and mend relations with the French via a currency agreement and an arms deal that would pave the way for renewed French influence in the former mandate. But Zaim's reign did not last long. One hundred and thirty-seven days after he had taken power, on 14 August he too was overthrown and executed.
— James   Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle for the Mastery of the Middle East
Only if we understand our past, can we move forward to a brighter future.
— Barbara Post-Askin, Reflections of Liberty: Memoir by Barbara Post-Askin
Respect is reverence out of love, Fear is reverence out of hate.Choose Wisely
— Abhysheq Shukla, The Reflection "Success or Stress"Choose Wisely
The Djojobojo Prophecy doesn't just tell you WHAT happened and WHERE it happened...it tells you WHY it happened!
— Yvonne B Murtha
My book "Bamboo Walls" is forever because the Djojobojo Prophecy is timeless!
— Yvonne B Murtha
Still, compared to him, compared to the people we descend from, I am free of history. I'm so free of history I have to get in a car and drive seven states to find it.
— Sarah Vowell
In our wildest aberrations we dream of an equilibrium we have left behind and which we naively expect to find at the end of our errors. Childish presumption which justifies the fact that child-nations, inheriting our follies, are now directing our history.
— Albert Camus
Anyone who wishes to destroy humanity's past, desires to destroy its future.
— Mario J. Lucero
I want to be undone by you. I want to be the one to come to pieces in your arms, to forget there is anything in this world but the two of us.
— Laura Andersen, The Virgin's Daughter
Some among the Armenians in the diaspora would never want the Turks to recognize the genocide. If they do so, they'll pull the rug out from under our feet and take the strongest bond that unites us. Just like the Turks have been in the habit of denying their wrongdoing, the Armenians have been in the habit of savoring the cocoon of victim hood. Apparently, there are some old habits that need to be changes on both sides." Baron Baghdassarian
— Elif Shafak, The Bastard of Istanbul
Today what was impossible is made possible and the rest is history
— Sunday Adelaja
Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Parmenides all state or suggest that thinking the right kinds of thoughts positively transforms our relationship to our environment. If thoughts are the right kind, it is presumably because they build on the particular receptivity of human nature to true knowledge about the nature of things, knowledge that, in turn, brings the person into greater harmony with the world around him. Thought is thus a uniquely transformative encounter with reality.
— Brooke Holmes, The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece
by the late fifth century, the identities of those excluded from full personhood—women, slaves, barbarians—are being increasingly understood in terms of the difficulty or impossibility of mastering the daemonic tendencies in their bodies, while the identities of free men grow more dependent on their capacity for keeping the body under control.
— Brooke Holmes, The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece
Presidents make history. I'm just a tool of history.
— Chris Weitz, The New Order
But maybe all it needs is a moment to change the course of history.
— Sally Gardner
Each second of every time has its own story and history to be filed.
— Auliq Ice
Deep is the chasm between the centuries, but by bridging it a man may return home.
— David C. Douglas, The Normans
Having a body, we have seen, does not entail knowing a body. Whereas a cow automatically eats whatever grasses supply needed nutrients, people must determine for themselves what to put into their bodies, with the result that there is room to make mistakes. Mistakes arise, in part, from ignorance. Yet ignorance is not the only problem produced by this arrangement. The fact that we are not compelled by our bodies' precise needs—understood as particular kinds of food and drink, rather than food and drink tout court—allows the formation of desires that have little or nothing to do with the needs on which bodily health depends.
— Brooke Holmes, The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece
Xenophon tells us that Socrates never neglected the body and did not praise those who did. We can imagine that it was because the physical body—volatile, unseen, and implicated in an automatized natural world—could seem so daemonic that entrusting life, both biological life and ethical life, to its dynamics could seem like ceding control of the human.
— Brooke Holmes, The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece
I am often appalled by those who make history, but inspired by those who do not.” -Morgana le Fey/Morgana Cornwall
— J.M.  Briggs, The Iron Realm
It's funny how humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their version of reality.
— Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
To err is human, to forgive, divine.
— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
Humans see what they want to see.
— Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five
The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.
— Jane Addams
But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.
— Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
We are each other's harvest
—  we are each other's business
Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avaoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don't want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you.
— Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter
In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.
— Anne Frank
What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.
— Chris Maser, Forest Primeval: The Natural History of an Ancient Forest
I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.
— Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight
The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren't any space aliens. We can't be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we're not all there is. If so, we're in big trouble.
— Ellen DeGeneres
People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.
— George Bernard Shaw
If a man cannot understand the beauty of life, it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.
— Anaïs Nin
Inside every sane person there's a madman struggling to get out," said the shopkeeper. "That's what I've always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.
— Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic
The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.
— Andy Rooney
Sometimes mortals can be more horrible than monsters.
— Rick Riordan
We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.
— Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed
We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions
To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.
— Mahatma Gandhi
In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless.
— Sigmund Freud, Letters of Sigmund Freud, 1873-1939
Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.
— Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals/On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns
I'm just another stupid human.
— Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger
I know there’s evil in the world, and there always has been. But you don’t need to believe in Satan or demons to explain it. Human beings are perfectly capable of evil all by themselves.
— Tess Gerritsen, The Mephisto Club
Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.
— Tom Robbins
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question.
— Michael Crichton, The Lost World
That’s the cost. That’s the price. Get ready, because when you crush the humanity out of humans, you’re left with humans with no humanity.In other words, you get what you pay for, motherfucker
— Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea
We wear clothes, and speak, and create civilizations, and believe we are more than wolves. But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are.
— Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
So you see, Good and Evil have the same face; it all depends on when they cross the path of each individual human being.
— Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym
But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Chaos was the law of nature
—  Order was the dream of man.
We can never be gods, after all--but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.
— N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.
— John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
— Albert Camus
We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.
— Stanisław Lem, Solaris
Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself.
— Joss Whedon
Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.
— Stanisław Lem, Solaris
Compassion is the chief law of human existence.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The only problem with her is that she is too perfect. She is bad in a way that entices, and good in a way that comforts. She is mischief but then she is the warmth of home. The dreams of the wild and dangerous but the memories of childhood and gladness. She is perfection. And when given something perfect, it is the nature of man to dedicate his mind to finding something wrong with it and then when he is able to find something wrong with it, he rejoices in his find, and sees only the flaw, becoming blind to everything else! And this is why man is never given anything that is perfect, because when given the imperfect and the ugly, man will dedicate his mind to finding what is good with the imperfect and upon finding one thing good with the extremely flawed, he will only see the one thing good, and no longer see everything that is ugly. And so....man complains to God for having less than what he wants... but this is the only thing that man can handle. Man cannot handle what is perfect. It is the nature of the mortal to rejoice over the one thing that he can proudly say that he found on his own, with no help from another, whether it be a shadow in a perfect diamond, or a faint beautiful reflection in an extremely dull mirror.
— C. JoyBell C.
I have no country to fight for
—  my country is the earth
If you treat people right they will treat you right ... ninety percent of the time.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
Keep in mind, Eragon, that no one thinks himself a villain, and few make decisions they think are wrong. A person may dislike his choice, but he will stand by it because, even in the worst circumstances, he believes that it was the best option available to him at the time.
— Christopher Paolini
Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.
— Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.
— Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose
Emotions are what make us human. Make us real. The word 'emotion' stands for energy in motion. Be truthful about your emotions, and use your mind and emotions in your favor, not against yourself.
— Robert T. Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad
In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
— C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being--neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being.
— Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
To me, Mother Nature isn't nearly as scary as human nature.
— Paula Stokes, Liars, Inc.
A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.
— Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
I hate to complain...No one is without difficulties, whether in high or low life, and every person knows best where their own shoe pinches.
— Abigail Adams
Human reason can excuse any evil.
— Veronica Roth, Divergent
The Doctor: Amazing. Nancy: What is? The Doctor: 1941. Right now, not very far from here, the German war machine is rolling up the map of Europe. Country after country, falling like dominoes. Nothing can stop it, nothing. Until one tiny, damp little island says "No. No, not here." A mouse in front of a lion. You're amazing, the lot of you. I don't know what you do to Hitler, but you frighten the hell out of me.
— Steven Moffat
I wish I loved the human Race, I wish I loved its silly face, and when I'm introduced to one, I wish I thought "what jolly fun"!
— Walter Alexander Raleigh
The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated: they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only “frail.” They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious; not just, only vindictive; not generous, only propitiatory; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all: liars every one of them, to the very backbone of their souls.
— George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
We all do better when we work together. Our differences do matter, but our common humanity matters more.
— Bill Clinton
The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.
— Terry Pratchett, The Science of Discworld II: The Globe
I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.
— Temple Grandin
A dog has one aim in life... to bestow his heart.
— J.R. Ackerley
Humanity can be divided into madmen and cowards. My personal tragedy is in being born into a world where sanity is held to be a character flaw.
— Mark  Lawrence, Prince of Fools
Some people come and go and are forgotten. But there are other people who share a part in our destinies. They come, they go, but they are never forgotten. They come, they go, but even after they go... they're still here. They never really went anywhere.
— C. JoyBell C.
A great sadness welled up in Magnus at the sight of him. It was human to age and die, and Jem stood outside that humanity now, outside the light that burned so brightly and so briefly. It was cold outside that light and fire. No one had greater cause to know that cold than Magnus did.
— Cassandra Clare, The Midnight Heir
The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, were being ashamed of what they were, lying about it, trying to be somebody else. Honesty was Fats' currency, his weapon and defense. It frightened people when you were honest; it shocked them. Other people, Fats had discovered, were mired in embarrasment and pretense, terrified that their truths might leak out, but Fats was attracted by rawness, by everything that was ugly but honest, by the dirty things about which the likes of his father felt humiliated and disgusted. Fats thought a lot about messiahs and pariahs; about men labeled mad or criminal; noble misfits shunned by the sleepy masses.
— J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy
Trees're always a relief, after people.
— David Mitchell, Black Swan Green
I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself.
— Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay