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Wisdom Quotes Homepage
Wisdom Quotes from Wise Men & Women To Impart Knowledge
& Deepen Understanding In All Arenas of Life - Page 9
Commentary  © 2008  Richard J. Chandler & Bonnett Chandler

 

Abraham Lincoln

The sixteenth President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1861 until his assassination in 1865, Abraham Lincoln was an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery in the United States.  During his term, he helped preserve the United States by leading the defeat of the secessionist Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. He introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865.

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.”

                      

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

- Abraham Lincoln  (1809-1865)

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Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud, more than any other explorer of the psyche, has shaped the mind of the 20th century. Commonly referred to as ‘the father of psychoanalysis’, his work has been highly influential - popularizing such notions as the unconscious, the Oedipus complex, defense mechanisms, Freudian slips and dream symbolism - while also making a long-lasting impact on fields as diverse as philosophy, and psychology, literature and film.
 
The book that made his reputation in the profession, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), is an indefinable masterpiece… part autobiography, part dream analysis, part theory of the mind, and part history of contemporary Vienna. But perhaps the most significant contribution Freud made to Western thought was his argument for the existence of an unconscious mind. Most importantly, Freud popularized the ‘talking-cure’, an idea that a person could solve problems simply by talking them over, something that was almost unheard of in the 19th century. Even though many psychotherapists today tend to reject the specifics of Freud’s theories, this basic mode of treatment comes largely from his work. When Freud was 81, the Nazis took over Austria, and after some reluctance, he emigrated to England with his wife and his favorite daughter and colleague Anna “to die in freedom.”

“Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.”

“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.”

“Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.”

“The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises.”

“Anatomy is destiny.”

“The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’”

                           

“What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.”

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”

“Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.”

- Sigmund Freud  (1856-1939)

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophy was built around themes of individualism, non-dualism and the American philosophy that evolved through his writings, Thoreau’s, and his godson, William James’ work, Transcendentalism.

“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?  Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

“Music takes us out of the ordinary and whispers secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.”

“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising, which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”

“A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.”

“Money often costs too much.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

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Gabriel García Márquez

In over 18 months of constant writing, made possible through generous donations of food and financial help from most everyone in his small Columbian town, Gabriel García Márquez wrote his groundbreaking novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, in 1968. Over 36 million copies have been sold worldwide with translations into over two-dozen languages. He was awarded the1982 Nobel Prize in Literature and 3 other international prizes for his works.  Widely credited with introducing the global public to magical realism, he has secured both significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success.

“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”

“No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.”

“The heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good; and thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burdens of the past.”

“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”

“A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.”

Gabriel Garcia Marquez  (1927- )

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Meryl Streep

The American actress, Meryl Streep, equally comfortable with comedic material as with heavy dramatic fare, is widely respected and considered to be one of the most  talented  and skilled actors of all time. Streep is one of the select actors to have won all four major motion picture acting awards (Oscars, Golden Globes, SAG, and BAFTA awards). She is the most nominated actor (both male and female) in Academy Award history with 14 nominations. She has starred in such renowned films as ‘The Deerhunter’, ‘Sophie’s Choice’, ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’, ‘Silkwood’, and ‘Out of Africa’.  Streep is currently starring in Robert Redford’s new political thriller, ‘Lions for Lambs’, also starring Tom Cruise.

“Everything we say signifies; everything counts, that we put out into the world. It impacts on kids, it impacts on the zeitgeist of the time.”

“The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy, we can all sense a mysterious connection to each other. I like to investigate these different women to see what the commonality is with me. When I get the script and read their story, I hear the “ping!” that makes a connection with my own life.”

“I think the most liberating thing I did early on was to free myself from any concern with my looks as they pertained to my work.”

“You can’t get spoiled if you do your own ironing.”

“Integrate what you believe in every single area of your life. Take your heart to work and ask the most and best of everybody else, too.”

“I have always regarded myself as the pillar of my life.”

- Meryl Streep (1949- )

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Albert Camus

The Algerian born French writer and philosopher, Albert Camus, was the second youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first being Rudyard Kipling. Camus is often associated with existentialism although he rejected the term, preferring to be known only as an author and a thinker. His life was made challenging by recurring tuberculosis, two marriages marred with infidelity, intermittent employment as a journalist and was ended prematurely by an auto accident. He was active within the French Resistance to the German occupation of France during World War II. For the 1st quote, he wrote on the French collaboration with Nazi occupiers:

“Now the only moral value is courage, which is useful here for judging the puppets and chatterboxes who pretend to speak in the name of the people.”

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

                                         

“Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.”

“Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.”

                                          

“Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.”

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

- Albert Camus  (1913-1960)

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One of the few to have won an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony, and a Grammy, Mel Brooks is an American writer, comedian, actor and producer.

“Humor is just another defense against the universe.”

“Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you’ve got to flap your arms and legs, you’ve got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive.”

“He who hesitates is poor.”

- Mel Brooks  (1926-)

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Erich Fromm was an internationally renowned social psychologist and humanistic philosopher. While his early life was in Germany, eventually earning a degree in sociology. He then studied psychoanalysis and started a private practice. He emigrated to Geneva, Switzerland and then to New York City for a professorship at Columbia University. Like Carl Jung, Fromm came from a religious family… in his case, Orthodox Jews. In later life he became what he called an ‘atheistic mystic’. His most famous book is ‘The Art of Loving.’ Here are some insightful quotes from Fromm.

“As we ascend the social ladder, viciousness wears a thicker mask”.

“Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.”

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”

“In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.”

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”

“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.”

- Erich Fromm  (1900-1980)

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Rita Mae Brown, a prolific American author of mysteries and other novels, poetry, screen plays and non-fiction, is also know as a women’s rights spokesperson, feminist, gay and lesbian activist as well as a fox hunting and polo enthusiast. Although she was expelled from the University of Florida in the 1960’s for participation in a civil rights rally, she went on to earn her English degree from New York University, a degree in cinematography from New York School of Visual Arts and a doctorate in Political science from the Institute of Policy Studies located in Washington, DC.

“Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.”

“A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.”

“About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won’t like you at all.”

“I believe you are your work. Don’t trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That’s a rotten bargain.”

“Writers will happen in the best of families.”

- Rita Mae Brown (1944- )

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Albert Einstein, named by Time Magazine in 1999 as the “Person of the Century,” wrote his 1st scientific paper at age 15 and by age 21 earned his degree in physics. After graduation, he spent almost 2 years unsuccessfully looking for a teaching job in academia and through the help of a friend’s father, eventually landed a job with the Swiss patent office, where he continued to work, despite being passed over for a promotion. He continued to publish extraordinarily important scientific works including his famous “Theory of Relativity” and eventually held a series of jobs in ever more prestigious universities, from which he negotiated contractual clauses that enabled him devote a great deal more of his time to writing and publishing than to teaching.

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.”

“A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.”

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

“Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.”

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

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