All Quotes and Proverbs

"War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost."

Karl Kraus

Peace and War

"Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share the guilt for the dead."

gen. Omar Bradley

Justice

Peace and War

"Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies."

W. L. George

Friendship and Hostility

Peace and War

Politics and Diplomacy

"We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest."

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg "Aphorisms"

Education

Intellect, Judgement

"We all are born mad. Some remain so."

Samuel Beckett "Waiting for Godot"

Normality and Madness

"We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others."

François de La Rochefoucauld

Egoism

Manners and Ethics

"We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand."

Pablo Picasso

Art and Culture

Truth and Falsity

"We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other wedded couples they sometimes live apart."

Hector Hugh Munro (Saki) "The Unbearable Bassington"

Politics and Diplomacy

Truth and Falsity

"We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups."

Deborah Tannen

Egoism

Human

"We all need money, but there are degrees of desperation."

Anthony Burgess

Richness and Money

"We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us."

George Eliot

Various

"We are all conceived in close prison; in our mothers' wombs, we are close prisoners all; when we are born, we are born but to the liberty of the house; prisoners still, though within larger walls; and then all our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death."

John Donne "Eighty Sermons"

Freedom and Servitude

Life and Death

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

Oscar Wilde "Lady Windermere's Fan"

Dreams and Desires

"We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to."

Graham Greene "The Heart of the Matter"

Life and Death

"We are all serving a life-sentence in the dungeon of self."

Cyril Connolly "Unquiet Grave"

Human

Life and Death

"We are all special cases. We all want to appeal to something! Everyone insists on his innocence, at all costs, even if it means accusing the rest of the human race and heaven."

Albert Camus "The Fall"

Egoism

Human

"We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm."

Winston Churchill

Egoism

"We are always getting ready to live, but never living."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life and Death

"We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong."

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Human

"We are born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society."

Judith Martin (Miss Manners)

Manners and Ethics

"We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education."

Rousseau-Jean-Jacques

Education

"We are but dust and shadow."

Horace "Odes"

Human

"We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers."

Abraham Joshua Heschel

God and Religion

Question and Problem

"We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems."

John W. Gardner

Question and Problem

Various

"We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full."

Marcel Proust

Health and Alcohol

Pain and Tears

"We are here and it is now: further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine."

Henry Louis Mencken

Human

Knowledge, Ignorance

"We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves."

François de La Rochefoucauld

Happiness

"We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation."

François de La Rochefoucauld

Loyalty and Betrayal

Power and Weakness

"We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys."

Eric Hoffer

Courage and Fear

Reality and Imagination

"We are most alive when we're in love."

John Updike

Love

"We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."

Thomas Jefferson

Truth and Falsity

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Human

"We are not human beings trying to be spiritual. We are spiritual beings trying to be human."

Jacquelyn Small

Human

Reality and Imagination

"We are not makers of history. We are made by history."

Martin Luther King

History and Nations

"We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours."

Dag Hammarskjöld "Markings"

Destiny and Fate

"We are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below. "

Herman Melville "Mardi"

Human

"We are shaped and fashioned by what whom we love."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Love

"We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works."

Douglas Adams

Science and Technology

"We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship."

George Wald

Human

"We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken."

Oscar Wilde "De Profundis"

Sorrow and Nostalgia

"We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents."

Eric Hoffer

Dreams and Desires

Talent and Genius

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."

Aristotle

Manners and Ethics

Success and Fame

"We can only learn to love by loving."

Iris Murdoch

Love

"We can't command our love, but we can our actions."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"

Love

"We cannot change our memories, but we can change their meaning and the power they have over us."

David Seamans

Memory

"We come into this world head first and go out feet first; in between, it is all a matter of balance."

Paul Boese

Life and Death

"We come too late to say anything which has not been said already."

Jean de La Bruyere

Oration and Silence

"We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves we have no great ones."

François de La Rochefoucauld

Defeates and Mistakes

Egoism