BrainyQuote is the web's largest, most user-friendly quotation site. brainyquote.com

Joined April 2009
2,700 Photos and videos
"Don't watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going." - Sam Levenson brainyquote.com/quotes/sam_l… Sam Levenson was an American humorist, writer, teacher, and television host best known for his folksy, heartwarming humor drawn from his childhood in a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn. After teaching high school Spanish for over a decade, he became a popular Catskills comedian and a frequent guest on shows like Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town, and authored the bestseller Everything but Money. (1911-1980)
1
2
9
927
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde brainyquote.com/quotes/oscar… Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet, playwright, and novelist who became one of the most popular and influential dramatists of late Victorian London, famed for his sparkling wit and epigrams. A leading figure in the Aestheticism movement, he is best known for his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and the comic masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). (1854-1900)
4
18
1,606
"Let the beauty of what you love be what you do." - Rumi brainyquote.com/quotes/rumi_… Rumi, in full Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian Sunni Muslim poet, Islamic scholar, and Sufi mystic widely regarded as one of the greatest spiritual masters and poetic geniuses in history. He founded the Mevlevi Order of Whirling Dervishes, and his masterwork, the Masnavi, remains one of the most influential works of mystical literature in the Muslim world. (1207-1273)
5
13
1,290
"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." - Isaac Newton brainyquote.com/quotes/isaac… Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, physicist, and astronomer who was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution. He formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation in his landmark 1687 work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, shares credit with Leibniz for developing calculus, and made foundational contributions to optics. (1643-1727)
4
12
1,193
"Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose." - Lyndon B. Johnson brainyquote.com/quotes/lyndo… Lyndon B. Johnson, often known as LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969 after assuming the office following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He championed an ambitious domestic agenda called the Great Society, signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and creating Medicare and Medicaid, though his presidency was also defined by the escalation of the Vietnam War. (1908-1973)
6
13
1,244
"A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work." - Colin Powell brainyquote.com/quotes/colin… Colin Powell was an American four-star Army general, diplomat, and statesman who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005, becoming the first African American to hold that office. He also served as the 12th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush, overseeing 28 crises including Operation Desert Storm in the 1991 Gulf War. (1937-2021)
4
13
1,151
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable." - Louis D. Brandeis brainyquote.com/quotes/louis… Louis D. Brandeis was an American lawyer and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939, becoming the first Jewish person appointed to the high court. Known as "the people's lawyer," he championed progressive causes, pioneered the fact-based "Brandeis Brief," and co-authored the influential 1890 article that established the right to privacy in American law. (1856-1941)
1
4
10
1,326
"I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion." - Alexander the Great brainyquote.com/quotes/alexa… Alexander the Great, also known as Alexander III of Macedon, was the king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon and one of history's most successful military commanders. Tutored in his youth by Aristotle, he built one of the largest empires of the ancient world, stretching from Greece to northwestern India, and remained undefeated in battle. (356 BC-323 BC)
5
13
1,741
"The secret of getting ahead is getting started." - Mark Twain brainyquote.com/quotes/mark_… Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, an American writer, humorist, lecturer, and journalist often called the father of American literature. Drawing on his boyhood along the Mississippi River, he produced enduring classics including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Life on the Mississippi, and The Innocents Abroad. (1835-1910)
5
17
1,755
"Once you label me you negate me." - Soren Kierkegaard brainyquote.com/quotes/soren… Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, and social critic widely regarded as the father of existentialism. Often writing under pseudonyms, he produced major works including Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, The Concept of Anxiety, and The Sickness Unto Death, exploring authentic individual existence, anxiety, despair, faith, and the limits of pure reason; his thought went on to shape 20th-century philosophy and theology, from Heidegger and Sartre to Karl Barth and Wittgenstein. (1813-1855)
2
6
12
1,430
"Where there is no vision, there is no hope." - George Washington Carver brainyquote.com/quotes/georg… George Washington Carver was an American agricultural scientist, inventor, and educator who became one of the most prominent Black scientists of the early 20th century. Born into slavery in Missouri, he spent 47 years as head of the Agriculture Department at the Tuskegee Institute, where he championed crop rotation and developed hundreds of uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans to help free Southern farmers from dependence on cotton. (c. 1864-1943)
1
5
14
1,371
"From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow." - Aeschylus brainyquote.com/quotes/aesch… Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian, often described as the father of tragedy, whose innovations on the Athenian stage (adding a second actor and expanding dialogue) shaped the entire course of Western drama. He fought against the Persians at the Battle of Marathon, wrote an estimated 70 to 90 plays of which only seven survive, including The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, and the Oresteia, the only complete Greek tragic trilogy that has come down to us. (c. 525-c. 456 BC)
4
9
1,660
"Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness." - Desmond Tutu brainyquote.com/quotes/desmo… Desmond Tutu was a South African Anglican bishop, theologian, and anti-apartheid activist who served as Bishop of Johannesburg and then as the first Black Archbishop of Cape Town. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his nonviolent leadership against apartheid, and after South Africa's transition to democracy he chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, becoming a global voice for justice, forgiveness, and human rights. (1931-2021)
1
2
14
1,931
"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." - T. S. Eliot brainyquote.com/quotes/t_s_e… T. S. Eliot was an American-born British poet, essayist, playwright, and literary critic who became a leading figure of 20th-century modernist poetry. He is best known for The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets, and for the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Order of Merit in 1948. (1888-1965)
2
11
1,898
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." - Harry S Truman brainyquote.com/quotes/harry… Harry S Truman was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953 after assuming office on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He led the country through the final months of World War II, authorized the use of atomic weapons against Japan, oversaw the founding of the United Nations and NATO, and launched the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and the Berlin Airlift to contain Soviet expansion at the dawn of the Cold War. (1884-1972)
7
19
1,438
"Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!" - Audrey Hepburn brainyquote.com/quotes/audre… Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian who became one of the defining film and fashion icons of Hollywood's Golden Age. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Roman Holiday (1953) and starred in Sabrina, Funny Face, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and My Fair Lady, before devoting the later years of her life to humanitarian work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, for which she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992. (1929-1993)
10
24
2,289
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" - Robert Browning brainyquote.com/quotes/rober… Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright of the Victorian era whose mastery of the dramatic monologue placed him among the foremost poets of his age. He is celebrated for works such as My Last Duchess, Porphyria's Lover, Fra Lippo Lippi, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and the book-length epic The Ring and the Book, and was married to fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. (1812-1889)
4
12
1,461
"What do you hang on the walls of your mind?" - Eve Arnold brainyquote.com/quotes/eve_a… Eve Arnold was an American photojournalist best known for her intimate, candid portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Malcolm X, Queen Elizabeth II, and Joan Crawford, as well as her reportage from China, Afghanistan, South Africa, and beyond. In 1951 she became the first woman associated with Magnum Photos, becoming a full member in 1957, and was honored with an OBE in 2003 for her services to photography. (1912-2012)
9
14
1,699
"We do not remember days, we remember moments." - Cesare Pavese brainyquote.com/quotes/cesar… Cesare Pavese was an Italian novelist, poet, short story writer, and literary critic, widely regarded as one of the most influential Italian writers of the 20th century. As an editor at the Einaudi publishing house, he introduced many modern American and English authors to Italian readers, and won the Strega Prize in 1950 for La Bella Estate shortly before his death; his best-known novel is La luna e i falo (The Moon and the Bonfires). (1908-1950)
1
17
1,709
"May you live all the days of your life." - Jonathan Swift brainyquote.com/quotes/jonat… Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish writer, essayist, Anglican cleric, and Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. He is widely regarded as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, best known for Gulliver's Travels (1726), A Modest Proposal (1729), and A Tale of a Tub (1704). (1667-1745)
6
20
1,947