Quotes by Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

German born American physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and received Nobel Prize in physics. His many contributions include general and special relativity, photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, mass-energy equivalence, Einstein field equations, Unified Field Theory, Bose–Einstein statistics. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time. (1879-1955)

“Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.”
-Albert Einstein

“Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
-Albert Einstein

“Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.”
-Albert Einstein

“Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.”
-Albert Einstein

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
-Albert Einstein

“Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”
-Albert Einstein

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
-Albert Einstein

“I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.”
-Albert Einstein

“If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.”
Albert Einstein

“If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.”
-Albert Einstein

“Imagination is more important than knowledge...”
-Albert Einstein

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”
-Albert Einstein

“Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.”
-Albert Einstein

“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
-Albert Einstein

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
-Albert Einstein

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.”
-Albert Einstein

“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”
-Albert Einstein

“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

“The important thing is not to stop questioning.”
-Albert Einstein

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”
-Albert Einstein

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.”
-Albert Einstein

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
-Albert Einstein

“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.”
-Albert Einstein

“The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.”
-Albert Einstein

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
-Albert Einstein

“To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.”
-Albert Einstein

“Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.”
-Albert Einstein

“Truth is what stands the test of experience.”
-Albert Einstein

“Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”
-Albert Einstein

“We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.”
-Albert Einstein

“Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.”
-Albert Einstein

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
-Albert Einstein, "Geometry and Experience", January 27, 1921

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
-Albert Einstein, "Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium", 1941

“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.”
-Albert Einstein, 'Out of My Later Years,' 1950

“It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.”
-Albert Einstein, 'Treasury for the Free World,' 1946

“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
-Albert Einstein, (attributed)

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.”
-Albert Einstein, (attributed)

“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”
-Albert Einstein, (attributed)

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
-Albert Einstein, (attributed)

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
-Albert Einstein, (attributed)

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
-Albert Einstein, (attributed)

“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” -
Albert Einstein, (attributed)

“The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”
-Albert Einstein, (attributed)

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.”
-Albert Einstein, (attributed)

“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
-Albert Einstein, (attributed)

“At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.”
-Albert Einstein, In a letter to Max Born, 1926

“If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.”
-Albert Einstein, Observer, Jan. 15, 1950

“Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”
-Albert Einstein, quoted in New York Times, March 13, 1940

“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
-Albert Einstein, Telegram, 24 May 1946

“When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.”
-Albert Einstein, The World as I See It.

“You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”
-Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio

Quotes by Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) was known as the Father of Nation played a stellar role in India's freedom struggle. Thinker, statesman and nationalist leader, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi not only led his own country to independence but also influenced political activists of many persuasions throughout the world with his methods and philosophy of nonviolent confrontation, or civil disobedience.

If he had wanted, Gandhi could have lived a very comfortable life as a lawyer. Instead he devoted it to prayer, fasting and meditation. He wore basic clothes and lived off fruit, vegetables and milk. He gave up his personal comfort to bring well-being to millions of others. He was one of the greatest men of this planet.
(1869-1948)

“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“Hate the sin, love the sinner.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“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

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
-Mahatma Gandhi, "Non-Violence in Peace and War"

“Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.”
-Mahatma Gandhi, 'Satyagraha Leaflet No. 13,' May 3, 1919

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
-Mahatma Gandhi, (attributed)

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”
-Mahatma Gandhi, 1931

“I think it would be a good idea.”
-Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

Quotes by Albert Camus

He was a novelist, philosopher, journalist, essayist of French-Algerian origin. Although known primarily for his novels and philosophical works, Camus was also a man of the theatre. He worked at various times as actor, director, playwright and translator for the stage. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957. Camus was closely linked to his friend existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1940s, but he broke with him over Sartre's support to Stalinist politics. Camus died at the age of forty-six in a car accident near Sens, France. He was a key philosopher of the 20th-century.
(1913-1960)

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
-Albert Camus

“Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.”
-Albert Camus

“Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.”
-Albert Camus

“Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend.”
-Albert Camus

“I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.”
-Albert Camus

“If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”
-Albert Camus

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
-Albert Camus

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
-Albert Camus

“There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.”
-Albert Camus

“Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.”
-Albert Camus

“We only know of one duty, and that is to love.”
-Albert Camus

“We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.”
-Albert Camus

“You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.”
-Albert Camus

“Love is the kind of illness that does not spare the inteligent or the dull.”
-Albert Camus, Caligula

“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
-Albert Camus, Happy Death

“What is a rebel? A man who says no.”
-Albert Camus, L'Homme revolte (The Rebel), 1951

“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”
-Albert Camus, La Chute (The Fall),1956

“He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.” -Albert Camus, The Rebel (1951)

Quotes by Oscar Wilde

Irish dramatist, poet, author and one of the most iconic figures from late Victorian society. For his sexuality he suffered the indignity and shame of imprisonment. For a long time his name was synonymous with scandal and intrigue. However with changing social attitudes he is remembered with great affection for his biting social criticism, wit and linguistic skills. (1854-1900)

Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.


A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

A true friend stabs you in the front.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating; people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Everything popular is wrong.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

All art is quite useless.

In examinations, the foolish ask questions the wise cannot answer.

A man who pays his bills on time is soon forgotten.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

I can resist everything except temptation.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Who, being loved, is poor?

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

Though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something.

I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house--tops.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Duty is what one expects from others.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy
Russian author, essayist and philosopher. He is one of the world's pre-eminent writers becoming famous through his epic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Towards the end of his life, Leo Tolstoy became increasingly interested in a version of pacifist Christianity with support for a strand of anarchist Communism. His exposition of pacifism, vegetarianism and non-violence had a profound influence on famous personalities like Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi considered Leo Tolstoy to be "the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced". (1828-1910)

History would be an excellent thing, if only it were true.
Leo Tolstoy

There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.
Leo Tolstoy

Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.
Leo Tolstoy

He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style.
Leo Tolstoy

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.
Leo Tolstoy

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.
Leo Tolstoy

Conceit is incompatible with understanding.
Leo Tolstoy

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.
Leo Tolstoy

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.
Leo Tolstoy

Boredom: the desire for desires.
Leo Tolstoy

But now everything will be different. It is nonsense to believe that life will not allow it, that the past will not allow it. I must struggle to live a better life, a far better life.
Leo Tolstoy

The truth is so evident, so binding, and so generally acknowledged that it is only necessary to put it clearly before men for the evil called war to become quite impossible.
Leo Tolstoy

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
Leo Tolstoy

I am always with myself and it is I who am my tormentor.
Leo Tolstoy

The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
Leo Tolstoy

There is only one time that is important - NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time hat we have any power.
Leo Tolstoy

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
Leo Tolstoy

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.
Leo Tolstoy


The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
Leo Tolstoy

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
Leo Tolstoy

We lost because we told ourselves we lost.
Leo Tolstoy

Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.
Leo Tolstoy

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy

The strongest of all warriors are these two - time and patience.
Leo Tolstoy

We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening.
Leo Tolstoy

And all people live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people.
Leo Tolstoy

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
Leo Tolstoy

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
Leo Tolstoy

Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.
Leo Tolstoy

Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.
Leo Tolstoy

The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.
Leo Tolstoy

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
Leo Tolstoy

The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.
Leo Tolstoy

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
Leo Tolstoy

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone.
Leo Tolstoy

If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.
Leo Tolstoy

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
Leo Tolstoy

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
Leo Tolstoy

Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
Leo Tolstoy

Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.
Leo Tolstoy

Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.
Leo Tolstoy

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
Leo Tolstoy

Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.
Leo Tolstoy

If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.
Leo Tolstoy

War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.
Leo Tolstoy

If you want to be happy, be.
Leo Tolstoy

True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion.
Leo Tolstoy

Quotes by John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy
He was the thirty-fifth president of the United States. He was the first president to reach for the moon, through the nation's space programs. He also was the first president since Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) with whom youth could identify. He made the nation see itself with new eyes.

On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullets as his motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; he was the youngest to die. His assassination shocked the world.
(1917 - 1963)

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
-John F. Kennedy

“Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.”
-John F. Kennedy


“If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”
-John F. Kennedy

“Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.”
-John F. Kennedy

“Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain”.
-John F. Kennedy

“Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”
-John F. Kennedy

“So, let us not be blind to our differences - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved.”
-John F. Kennedy

“The American, by nature, is optimistic. He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly.”
-John F. Kennedy

“The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.”
-John F. Kennedy

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
-John F. Kennedy

“The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!'”
-John F. Kennedy

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”
-John F. Kennedy

“There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”
-John F. Kennedy

“Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.”
-John F. Kennedy

“We must use time as a tool, not as a crutch.”
-John F. Kennedy

“We set sail on this new sea because there is knowledge to be gained.”
-John F. Kennedy

“We stand for freedom. That is our conviction for ourselves; that is our only commitment to others.”
-John F. Kennedy

“When we got into office, the thing that surprised me the most was that things were as bad as we'd been saying they were.”
-John F. Kennedy

“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”
-John F. Kennedy, Amherst College, Oct 26, 1963

“...probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone.”
-John F. Kennedy, Describing a dinner for Nobel Prize winners, 1962

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” -John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962

“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, Inaugural address, January 20, 1961

“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
-John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, January 20, 1961

“We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.”
-John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963

“For in the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal.”
-John F. Kennedy, Speech at The American University, Washington, D.C., June 10, 1963

“Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”
-John F. Kennedy, speech at The American University, Washington, D.C., June 10, 1963

“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.”
-John F. Kennedy, speech at Vanderbilt University, May 18, 1963

“All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea -- whether it is to sail or to watch it -- we are going back from whence we came.”
-John F. Kennedy, Speech given at Newport at the dinner before the America's Cup Races, September 1962

“We need men who can dream of things that never were.”
-John F. Kennedy, speech in Dublin, Ireland, June 28, 1963

“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity.”
-John F. Kennedy, Speech in Indianapolis, April 12, 1959