Great Quotes: Mark Twain on Honors

“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.” – Mark Twain

Great Quotes: John Stuart Mill on War

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

– John Stuart Mill

Great Quotes: Socrates on Reputations

 
“Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of – for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to gain a good reputation [...]

Great Quotes: Ben Franklin on Wine and Happiness

“Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine, a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” — Ben Franklin

Great Quotes: George C. Marshall on Looking Forward

“When a thing is done, it’s done. Don’t look back. Look forward to your next objective.” — General George C. Marshall

Great Quotes: Roosevelt on the Man in the Arena

“It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and… sweat and blood; who strives valiantly…who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

Great Quotes: Pascal on Persuasive Ideas

“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.” — Blaise Pascal

Great Quotes: Lincoln on Vices and Virtues

Daily Thought:  Be patient with the gents around you…if anyone truly had their act together they’d probably be very, very boring.
“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
– Abraham Lincoln

Great Quotes: Sir Francis Bacon on Shortsightedness

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.”
– Sir Francis Bacon

Great Quotes: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on Theories

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Great Quotes: Franklin on Money & Values

 
“He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.”
– Benjamin Franklin
 

Great Quotes: Lindbergh on Daring

 
“Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in a fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for [...]

Great Quotes: MLK on the Silence of Friends

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“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Great Quotes: Thomas Jefferson on Staying Unruffled

 
“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”
– Thomas Jefferson
 

Great Quotes: Galileo on The Use of God’s Gifts

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
– Galileo Galilei

Great Quotes: Mark Twain on Generalizations

“All generalizations are false, including this one.”
– Mark Twain

Great Quotes: Kierkegaard on Freedom of Speech

 
“People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.”
– Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
 

Great Quotes: Pericles on What You Leave Behind

 
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
– Pericles
 

Great Quotes: Patton on Doing Your Best

 
“If a man does his best, what else is there?”
– General George S. Patton, Jr.

Great Quotes: Golda Meir on Humility

“Don’t be so humble – you are not that great.” — Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat