Quotes on Life

The idea of a book that can make a change to your life, that can affect your perspective, is a beautiful and great ambition: one that Seneca, Nietzsche and Tolstoy would have sympathised with.

I used to be one of those students who needed to see something bigger, and God brought people into my life who gave me a bigger vision than the circumstances that surrounded me.

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men.

To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember this happening was when I was 10, with a biography of Thomas Edison.

My goal is one Olympic gold medal. Not many people in this world can say, 'I'm an Olympic gold medalist.'

It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

The good life, as it is popularly conceived, typically involves acquiring mastery in one's work, thus gaining for oneself better terms - or means to rewards, whether material, like wealth, or nonmaterial - an experience we may call 'prospering.'

We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well.

What is there unreasonable in admitting the intervention of a supernatural power in the most ordinary circumstances of life?

It is easy to be disgruntled if you are denied rights and freedoms to which you feel entitled. But if you are not coherent, if you cannot put into words what it is that displeases you and why it is unfair and should change, then you are dismissed as an unreasonable whiner. You may be lectured about perseverance and patience, life as a test, the need to accept the higher wisdom of others.

There is a destiny which makes us brothers; none goes his way alone. All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.

If we do discover more than one type of life on Earth, we can be fairly certain that the universe is teeming with it, for it would be inconceivable that life started twice here but never on all the other earth-like planets.

I also remember the moment my life changed, the moment I finally said, "I've had it!" I know I'm much more than I'm demonstrating mentally, emotionally, and physically in my life. I made a decision in that moment which was to alter my life forever. I decided to change virtually every aspect of my life. I decided I would never again settle for less that I can be.

The usefulness of religion - the fact that it gives life meaning, that it makes people feel good - is not an argument for the truth of any religious doctrine. It's not an argument that it's reasonable to believe that Jesus really was born of a virgin or that the Bible is the perfect word of the creator of the universe.

This is the reason we cannot complain of life: it keeps no one against his will.

Those 62 million girls who are not being educated around the world impact my life in Washington, D.C., in the United States of America. Because if we aren't empowering and providing the skills and the resources to half of our population, then we're not realizing our full potential as a society, as mankind.

I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We're still just a child creature, we're still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We're growing up, we're moving into adolescence now. When we grow up - man, we're going to be something!

Never limit your view of life by any past experience.

Not so many years ago there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel -movement through space -provided the universal metaphor for change. One of the subtle confusions -perhaps one of the secret terrors -of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did.

The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.