Various quotes that continue to inspire me or reflect my worldview.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
– Socrates

“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

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
– Helen Keller

“If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it.”
– Willy Wonka

“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

“A mechanized culture did much damage to their souls.”
– Anonymous

“What we do in life echoes in eternity.”
– Maximus Decimus Meridius

“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

“Nothing gold can stay.”
– Robert Frost

“I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none.”
– Shakespeare

“I walk the fine line between arrogance and acute awareness of self-worth.”
– Anonymous

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.”
– Niccolò Machiavelli

“None are more helplessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
– Joseph Goebbels

“The ‘truth’ you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.”
– Pema Chödrön

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
– Michelangelo

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it; boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“To live at all is to be vulnerable.”
– C. S. Lewis

“Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
– Margaret Mead

“Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.”
– Fred Shero

“No one will surprise me unless you do.”
– Peter, Bjorn and John

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did.”
– Mark Twain

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”
– Eric Hoffer

“There is no separation between social justice and the cross.”
– Matt Carter

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
– Jesus of Nazareth

“It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men.”
– Thucydides

“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”
– Buddha

“We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world–no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.”
– President Woodrow Wilson

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
– Mark Twain

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself; I am large, I contain multitudes.”
– Walt Whitman

“Profound music leads us–beyond language–to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.”
– Cornel West

“Wind is to fire like distance is to love; it extinguishes the small and inflames the great.”
– Unknown

“Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.”
– Rose Franken

“The political tactics of division and slander are not our values. They are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country.”
– John McCain

“Mediocrity is a tax paid by those who succumb to fear and comfort.”
– The Accidental Creative

“There’s a freedom you begin to feel the closer you get to Austin, Texas.”
– Willie Nelson

“Relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”
– Stanley Milgram

“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
– George Washington

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.”
– Sinclair Lewis

“If we can make Washington more like Texas, the whole country will be a winner.”
– Sen. John Cornyn

“When I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why are the poor hungry, they called me a communist.”
– Dom Helder Camara

“Our dreams are the touchstones of our character.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“There is no greater patriotism than dissent by the loyal citizen, and no more earnest faith possessed than by the one who dares ask the question.”
– Will Roman

“Don’t fully trust anyone until they have stuck with a good cause which they saw was losing.”
– Jason Stoddard

“The best revenge is to simply be successful.”
– Scott Carr

“It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.”
– Moliere

“Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
– T. S. Elliot

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
– Marcus Aurelius

“Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.”
– John F. Kennedy

“The troops of other states have their reputation to gain, the Sons of the Alamo have theirs to maintain.”
– Jefferson Davis

“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it.”
– Chinese Proverb

“Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.”
– M.C. Escher

“If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work.”
– Beryl Markham

“I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do. That is character.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

“To every man, there comes in his lifetime, that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered a chance to do a very special thing, unique to him and fitted to his talents. What a tragedy if that moment should find him unprepared or unqualified for the work which would be his finest hour.”
– Sir Winston Churchill

“Princes are born into success, men make their own.”
– John DeVore

“The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.”
– Confucius

“Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.”
– Cormac McCarthy

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

“Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”
– Warren G. Tracy

“A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.”
– Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

“One can get anything if he is willing to help others get what they want.”
– Zig Ziglar

“An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it.”
– Roy Ash

“There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion
That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble
Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret,
Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.”
– John F. Kennedy

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
– Frederick Douglass

“The world is a great book, of which they that never stir from home read only a page.”
– Saint Augustine

“Every man dies. Not every man really lives.”
– William Wallace

“War is an ugly thing, but it is 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. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
– John Stuart Mill