Motivational Quotes

Quotations

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

- Debord, Guy

Best Quotes about Quotations

People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.

David H. Comins

The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation.

Benjamin Disraeli

The essence of a quote is the compression of a mass of thought and observation into a single saying.

Morely, John

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

There are two kinds of marriages -- where the husband quotes the wife and where the wife quotes the husband.

Odets, Clifford

Quotations offer one kind of break in what the eye can see, the ear can hear.

Hassan, Ihab

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?

Philip G. Hamerton

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

A quotation at the right moment is like bread to the famished.

Talmud, The

10.

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied,'Verify your quotations.'

Sir Winston Churchill

11.

Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote.

Edward Young

12.

I must claim the quoter's privilege of giving only as much of the text as will suit my purpose, said Tan-Chun. If I told you how it went on, I should end up by contradicting myself!

Cao Xueqin

13.

Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.

Benjamin, Walter

14.

A book of quotations . . . can never be complete.

Robert M. Hamilton

15.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

George Bernard Shaw

16.

A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.

Joseph Roux

17.

That is the point of quotations. One can use another's words to be insulting.

Cross, Amanda

18.

He wrapped himself in quotations- as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.

Rudyard Kipling

19.

Great speeches have always had great soundbites. The problem now is that the young technicians who put together speeches are paying attention only to the soundbite, not to the text as a whole, not realizing that all great soundbites happen by accident, which is to say, all great soundbites are yielded up inevitably, as part of the natural expression of the text. They are part of the tapestry, they aren't a little flower somebody sewed on.

Noonan, Peggy

20.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

21.

Too much traffic with a quotation book begets a conviction of ignorance in a sensitive reader. Not only is there a mass of quotable stuff he never quotes, but an even vaster realm of which he has never heard.

Davies, Robertson

22.

A book that furnishes no quotations is no book -- it is a plaything.

Peacock, Thomas Love

23.

If you have any doubts that we live in a society controlled by men, try reading down the index of contributors to a volume of quotations, looking for women's names.

Elaine Gill

24.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

25.

Be careful -- with quotations, you can damn anything.

Andre Malraux

26.

I not only use all the brains I have but all I can borrow.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

27.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

28.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

29.

An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.

Edwin P. Whipple

30.

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.

H. L. Mencken

31.

We rarely quote nowadays to appeal to authority... though we quote sometimes to display our sapience and erudition. Some authors we quote against. Some we quote not at all, offering them our scrupulous avoidance, and so make them part of our white mythology. Other authors we constantly invoke, chanting their names in cerebral rituals of propitiation or ancestor worship.

Hassan, Ihab

32.

To be amused by what you read--that is the great spring of happy quotations.

C. E. Montague

33.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved into perpetuity by a nation's proverbs, fables, folk sayings and quotations.

William Feather

34.

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats --and one always secretes too much jelly.

Woolf, Virginia

35.

A quotation in a speech, article or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority.

Brendan Francis

36.

There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought.

Pierre Bayle

37.

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

Alfred North Whitehead

38.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

He wrapped himself in quotations -- as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.

Kipling, Rudyard

40.

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

Quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara... are as germane to our highly technological, computerized society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport.

Alinsky, Saul

42.

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

Robert Benchley

43.

In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. It used to be the classics, now it's lyric verse.

Waugh, Evelyn

44.

Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely- read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely.

Hesketh Pearson

45.

I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning , or destroyed it altogether.

Alfred North Whitehead

46.

Stronger than an army is a quotation whose time has come.

Gates, W. I. E.

47.

What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?

Doctor Who

48.

I think we must quote whenever we feel that the allusion is interesting or helpful or amusing.

Fadiman, Clifton

49.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

50.

I never have found the perfect quote. At best I have been able to find a string of quotations which merely circle the ineffable idea I seek to express.

Caldwell O'Keefe