Bruce Lee

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

As you think, so shall you become.

A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successfull personality and duplicate it.

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations and you're not in this world to live up to mine.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of.

If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done.

It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.

Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

John Kenneth Galbraith 

In economics, the majority is always wrong.

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.

A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.

By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.

Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

 Humor is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some value in gaining and holding attention, but it has no persuasive value at all.

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.  

If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.

In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.

Louis Nizer

A beautiful lady is an accident of nature. A beautiful old lady is a work of art.

A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults.

A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.

Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.

I know of no higher fortitude than stubborness in the face of overwhelming odds.

To find a fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.

We are slow to believe that which if believed would hurt our feelings.

When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing at himself.

Words of comfort, skillfully administered, are the oldest therapy known to man.

Yes, there's such a thing as luck in trial law but it only comes at 3 o'clock in the morning. You'll still find me in the library looking for luck at 3 o'clock in the morning.

To find a fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.

A fine artist is one who makes familiar things new and new things familiar.

Franz Liszt

Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day.

Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.

Broad paths are open to every endeavour, and a sympathetic recognition is assured to every one who consecrates his art to the divine services of a conviction of a consciousness.

Companions, in misery and worse, that is what we all are, and to try to change this substantially avails us nothing.

I conclude that the Wagnerian operas which are already in the repertoire, and other masterworks as well, stand in no further need of my services.

I did not compose my work as one might put on a church vestment... rather it sprung from the truly fervent faith of my heart, such as I have felt it since my childhood.

I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.

In Hungary all native music, in its origin, is divided naturally into melody destined for song or melody for the dance.

Inspiration is enough to give expression to the tone in singing, especially when the song is without words.

It is impossible to imagine a more complete fusion with nature than that of the Gypsy.

It is my fervent wish and my greatest ambition to leave a work with a few useful instructions for the pianists after me.

Life is only a long and bitter suicide, and faith alone can transform this suicide into a sacrifice.

Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.

Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Art is a jealous mistress.

Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.

You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me?

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

Michael Faraday

All this is a dream. Still examine it by a few experiments. Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature . . .

Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature.

The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success are concentration, discrimination, organization, innovation and communication.

The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly.

The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.

I was at first almost frightened when I saw such mathematical force made to bear upon the subject, and then wondered to see that the subject stood it so well.

Nature is our kindest friend and best critic in experimental science if we only allow her intimations to fall unbiassed on our minds.

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Learn that which is already known to others, and then by the light and methods which belong to science … learn for ourselves and for others; so making a fruitful return to man in the future for that which we have obtained from the men of the past.

There is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle.

Arthur Schopenhauer

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

 
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

Life is a business that does not cover the costs.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
 

To free a man from error does not mean to take something from him, but to give him something.

Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher.

The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.

Hatred is a thing of the heart, contempt a thing of the head.

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes . . .

Jon Stewart

My life [is] a series of Hollywood orgies and Kabbalah center brunches with the cast of Friends. At least that's what my handlers tell me.

I have complete faith in the continued absurdity of whatever’s going on.

The Jews celebrate Passover by eating unpalatable food to remind them what will happen to their people if they ever leave New York City. The traditional meal often includes gefilte fish. For those of you who don't know what gefilte fish is, it strongly resembles a ball of tuna fish that has been passed nasally.

I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.

I was born with an adult head and a tiny body. Like a 'Peanuts' character.

I'm not just a boy toy. I have feelings and dreams like anybody else.

I'm too short to host a late-night talk show. It's like the bar at an amusement-park ride. You have to be six foot two or over.

I've always liked Atlanta. And not just for the strip clubs, but the shopping and the food.

I've been to Canada, and I've always gotten the impression that I could take the country over in about two days.

The seven marvels that best represent man's achievements over the last 2,000 years will be determined by Internet vote... so look for Howard Stern's Private Parts to come in No. 1.

There are a hell of a lot of jobs that are scarier than live comedy. Like standing in the operating room when a guy's heart stops, and you're the one who has to fix it!

There is no such thing as an impartial jury because there are no impartial people. There are people that argue on the web for hours about who their favorite character on "Friends" is.

Leonard Cohen

Ah, you loved me as a loser, but now you're worried that I just might win . . .

I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory . . .

I don't consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin.

Please understand, I never had a secret chart
to get me to the heart of this
or any other matter.

A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.

Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.

Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity.

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face.

I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.

In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress.

Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true.

Simone de Beauvoir

All oppression creates a state of war.

All the idols made by man, however terrifying they may be, are in point of fact subordinate to him, and that is why he will always have it in his power to destroy them.

Art is an attempt to integrate evil.

Buying is a profound pleasure.

Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it.

It was said that I refused to grant any value to the maternal instinct and to love. This was not so.

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth — and truth rewarded me.

I'm never afraid. But in my case it's nothing to be proud of.

There is only one good. And that is to act according to your conscience.